


Audrey

by audreythree



Series: AU season three - Dana [3]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 22:50:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreythree/pseuds/audreythree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Audrey returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's A Wonderful Life

**Author's Note:**

> episode II of AU season three: Dana. Read that first. Seriously.  
> Complete as of Oct 1. Whew.  
> references to my other pieces (Ricochet and Risky Business) may occur without warning. If you don't already know them, you might not notice.

Nathan watched the closed circuit feed from the station’s holding cells on his computer screen.  Duke paced back and forth like one of those caged animals, driven crazy by confinement and lack of stimulation.  Back and forth and back and forth – he’d been doing it for hours now, with no sign of wearing out or calming down.

The rest of the station was utter chaos; victims, former hostages, his officers trying to take statements, handle press inquiries – even now that it was all over.  Or nearly over, the cover-up operations barely begun.  Too goddamn many questions about why Shawn Wright was dead and Duke Crocker was in custody for Nathan to show his face out there.

Nathan forced his eyes closed.  He was not strong enough to watch any longer, or to watch Audrey, sitting on the floor with her back to him, leaning up against the bars.

 _Audrey_.

Nathan looked again.  She was still there. 

 

Audrey looked up at him from her position on the floor when he came in – flinched as Duke flung himself against the bars at the sight of him.

“Let me OUT of here!”

Nathan ignored him –

“Nathan,” she started.  He didn’t let her finish.  Duke’s insanity, Duke’s crime, were all way down on some list he should make about what he should be doing.  Right now – he held a hand out her.  If she didn’t respond he was perfectly willing to drag her out.

She took his hand.

 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

That much she knew.  Nathan pretty much dragged her out of the holding cell area, closed in on her until she backed up against a wall, and he crowded in too close.  He didn’t touch her, except that his look raked over her again.  They were out of the range of the CCTV cameras, but any one of the other officers could walk in at any time, probably with a perfectly reasonable excuse about checking on the prisoner. They were naturally curious and excited about her walking back into the station with Nathan.

 _Two years_ after she’d disappeared.

Ordinarily she would have said something pithy and disarming, made a crack – something to reestablish a professional and personal distance between them.  But 1) she couldn’t think of anything, 2) she didn’t want any more distance between them and 3) she was more afraid of Nathan right now than Duke – who was himself certifiable.

She’d just barely been able to hold onto the idea that she’d been different people in the past.  That she came and went with the Troubles, didn’t age, and didn’t remember.  That she was also a different person in the present, right now, that some other woman had been wearing her body, walking around and living her life –

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She felt like she’d been dropped into the middle of a bomb going off in slow motion, like in a movie.  She could see the shockwave spread out around her but she could do nothing about it.  It was still propagating outwards faster than the speed of sound.  You couldn’t even hear it coming - taking out her whole world as she stood still and watched it happen.

Two years.

It was unimaginable.

No, that wasn’t true.  There were coma patients who woke up after years of being asleep. There were kidnappings and abductions that lasted much longer.

Most of them didn’t have someone else using their body while they were away though. 

Only in Haven.

Duke crashed against the bars again, yelling to be set free and calling Nathan a tumbling slurry of awful names.

“Let me go back,” she said, putting a hand to Nathan’s chest, collarbone.  Didn’t touch skin to skin, deliberately.

Nathan made a wounded noise, uncontrolled, then shifted deliberately so that her fingers touched his neck just above the collar.  Whined again at that, and her hand went around his neck, combed up through his hair,  “Audrey.”  Temple to temple.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this either.  She couldn’t bear that she’d hurt him so, that he was so hurt by her.  For whatever reason – no one’s fault.  No one that they could _find_ to blame at least, for the impossible situation they – the three of them – found themselves in.  “Let me go back in.  He’s calmer when I’m there.”

“He thinks -”

“No, he doesn’t.  He knows.”  She was not who she was.  Had been.  Dana Bellamy.  “Why do you think he’s so –”  Human body vs. steel in the other room, again, and Audrey was not willing to bet one way or the other which would give in first.

“Crazy.”  Nathan took no joy in the verdict.

“Upset,” she modified.

“He killed my prisoner.  My _in custody_ prisoner.”

She knew.  She’d been there for when Nathan had removed the cuffs from Shawn Wright’s body and put them on Duke.  One moment in her apartment getting ready for their first date, then next moment getting up off the floor in the middle of a nightmare.  Or, the messy fallout of a nightmare, situation normal in Haven – except for the missing two years and ghost rider in her body.

Bile rose.  Not ready to think about that yet.  She shoved it back down.

It was a professional thing.  An honor thing.  As police they put a man in cuffs for their own safety, took him into custody, but in doing so they took on the responsibility of taking care of that prisoner.  That meant that a prisoner’s safety went squarely on the arresting officer’s shoulders.  Nathan’s.  He’d been safely restrained, the hostages freed, and posed no imminent threat.  Duke had betrayed Nathan in killing Shawn Wright. 

Four dead, hostages taken at the school, dangerous Troubled kid; she grasped that much.

It was Duke as contract assassin she had trouble with.

“Let me help him,” she said, her thumb rubbing along Nathan’s neck.  They had time for them, later, but right now – Duke was in trouble, Troubled, and needed her.  This is what she did, who she was, and if there was _nothing_ else in her life that was certain, she could –  would – cling to that.

“You’ll get your turn,” Audrey told Nathan.  She had questions for him, too.

“He stays inside.  And you stay outside.” 

He said that, but didn’t move.  Didn’t let her move.  “Nathan?”

“I’m trying,” he muttered, with a cutting smile. 

 _Nathan._   Her breath left her as she met his eyes.   A day for her, and two years for him, and she didn’t know which of them felt it more.  He’d suffered more, obviously. Painfully thin, eyes dulled and hidden from her.   

He pushed himself off the wall behind her, then held his hands up in surrender.

 

Duke took one look at her, walking back into the passageway beside the cell, and moved back to the far wall.  Paced there, but at least stopped shouting to be released.

She propped the chair she’d brought with her with the back facing the bars, straddled it.  If you got bucked off, you got right back on that horse again.  No fear.  She wondered briefly if that was Audrey Parker’s wisdom – or something older, something from when she’d actually ridden horses.

She shook her head; focus, Audrey.

_Duke had taken up his father’s curse and run with it._

Oh god no.  That was the worse place to start.

_Duke had absorbed different Troubles from people he hadn’t killed, adding them to his own._

Worse.

_Duke and –Dana– had slept together – fucked –_

Oh fuck no.  Not that.

_Duke had died, and come back to life._

She looked up at him, pressed up against the far wall.  There was that.  They had that in common.  “I feel like I should apologize.  I gather I’m the last person you want to see right now.”  He only stared at her.

To her it was less than twenty-four hours since they’d been on his boat, opening up that god-forsaken box of weapons, discovering the diary.  Twelve hours since she’d blown him off in the street, a well-meant but meaningless ‘we’ll figure it out.’  Less than six since she’d watched Kyle Hopkins sacrifice himself, but using Duke to do it.  Using him, and putting that blood guilt on him.

Skip ahead two years and this is what the Crocker curse looked like.

“No.”

She looked up again, startled that he’d spoken – to her, apparently – and had to back track to connect what he meant.  No, she wasn’t the last person he wanted to see.  “Duke…” she smiled, a little watery.  The first time he’d acknowledged her at all.  “Nathan told me a little about her.  I want –”  She didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted to cheer and congratulate him, she wanted to know all about his girlfriend, his new life, what had happened in his life while she’d been away. She wanted to be friends, like they had been, all of half a day ago.

Then again, she really didn’t want to talk about Dana.

She didn’t want to think about a two year hole in her life, and how she’d gone away – somehow, somewhere – and come back to find her _life_ had a new tenant.  It was way worse than finding out she’d been copied, somehow.  She’d been replaced.  That she – even the facsimile version of Audrey Parker that she was – wasn’t good enough, a part that malfunctioned, and she’d been pulled and replaced.

“Help me out here, Duke, please,” she whispered, rocking forward on the chair, arms wrapped around it because there was nothing, no one else, to hang on to.  “I’m trying to figure this out.”

That was what she’d promised him.  Start with that.  “What happened with Shawn Wright?”

Duke shook his head.  “I don’t remember.”

“What do you remember?”

The wrong question.  He stepped backward – hard to manage when he was already against the wall, but he moved away, physically and mentally.  “I don’t remember anything either,” she tried.  “I was making pancakes, and then I was waking up on the floor of that gym. I got knocked out once – taking down this guy Florida – actually right before I came to Haven. But this time instead of a couple minutes, it’s two years later.”

There was literally no safe way out of this conversation.

No fear.  Just get him to talk, somehow.  What she wanted or did not want was not the point, not right now.

“I’m glad it was you.”  Their eyes met, sudden understanding.  She was glad it was Duke this other woman had chosen.  Or that it was Duke who chose Dana, or both.  Anyone else and she’d be busy trying to change her skin right now.

“She was made for me.” Rattlesnake warning, don’t touch.  Audrey didn’t understand, and Duke came up to the bars – as if that would make his meaning clearer.  “You were made for Nathan, Dana was _designed_ for me.”  Clearer, but phrased as a threat.

It was not a new thought for her; she’d had it herself on a few of those long nights lying awake wondering who she was. What she was. It was a little appalling to know that Duke – and presumably Nathan – had realized the same thing.  Being a cop, an ex- FBI agent, was too convenient to getting close to the Troubles that she could take it as a coincidence.  It wasn’t a great leap to imagine that of all the FBI agents that ‘they’ could have copied, Audrey Parker was the most suitable match for the one cop she’d be working with most.

It was a lot more horrific to realize that they’d done it again, this time finding someone who-  “Why?” She got up off the chair, went to him.  Why him?  She’d come to understand her mission in her strange life was to help the Troubled. Dana, too?  What did that have to do with staying close to – even up to loving and being in love with – Duke?

Why take her away – and then replace her with this other woman, so quickly?  Relatively quickly, two years as opposed to twenty-seven, but still.  Two years!  Why replace her with someone who would naturally choose Duke over Nathan?  Choose a smuggler over a cop?  Someone who had to start all over again and… make those different choices…

So – somewhere along the line Audrey had made the wrong choice. And whoever (!) brought her here, whoever ‘they’ were; they’d decided to wipe the slate clean and start again.

He didn’t back down, or back away, as she approached.  A connection, a start.  Something that he wanted from her; her approval and understanding.  He would only open up to her when she did the same for him.

“Evi – one of the last things she said was that – I was important.  That the Rev had told her that I was important.  I thought it was just because he wanted to use me to murder Troubled people.  Now, I wonder.  She never told the simple truth in her adult life – and probably not before that – but, I wonder.”  He looked at his own arms, his hands.  “You don’t know, Audrey.  You weren’t here.  You don’t know what I can do.”

“I think you’re important,” Audrey said.  And not because of his Trouble.  Troubles.

She slid down to the floor again, right back where she’d been when Nathan had come in. This time, Duke came with her, sat beside her so that their shoulders touched through the bars.

“You’re supposed to ask what I can do.”

She shook her head.  She didn’t care what he could do.  No, not quite true.  Whatever he could do, it was killing him.  It was changing him, which was probably worse.

She hadn’t been here, and she hadn’t had any choice about it, but she still felt like it was her fault somehow.  He was her responsibility.  They all were.  And now – from what little Nathan had told her – things were even worse in Haven.  Duke was certainly worse.  She remembered the sickened horror on his face as they picked up Kyle Hopkins – rubbing at his hands like Lady Macbeth.  Not his fault either – she only half understood what had happened there, conversations with ghosts she couldn’t see – but she fully understood that guilt. 

There was no hand wringing now.

She’d killed, accidentally and deliberately.  Legally, for all that mattered.  Not a lot.  Justifiably, for the greater good.  People she’d failed to save.  But still, every soul weighed on her, her failures.  She should have had a better answer.

Audrey put her hand over Duke’s, now clenched around a bar of his cage.  He allowed it.  “Did  she help?  You, or other people?”

“Yes. She was just starting, but yes.”

She was glad.  Relieved.  “This murdering other Troubled people has to stop though.”  Whether it was the Rev or – unbelievably – Nathan wanting him to do it, it had to stop.  “Just, don’t.  I don’t care who says, or what you think you can save or accomplish.  Don’t.  You’re important, Duke, but not for that. And it isn’t worth it.”

She could feel the resistance in him, saw it in the blinked look away from her.  “Duke, I mean it. If I –” She couldn’t say it, admit that, not so soon.  _If I ever go away again._   Because of course she would. She always did.  “If our friendship means anything to you.  Don’t do it.”

She clearly remembered, like it was this afternoon, Duke – tormented by ghosts – settling a look on her like an anchorage in a storm.  _No, she’s my friend._ She needed him to trust her like that again.

“I’m glad it was you,” she repeated in a whisper.

“Nathan came after me, when he found you gone.”  Duke said.

She looked at him, trying to decipher the question hidden in that. She sensed his hurt, but she couldn’t actually read minds.  “And?”

“Why did he do that?”

“Why are you asking me?”  Why not ask Nathan?  Why, after two years apparently, was this still bothering him?  On the street, this morning.  _I don’t want to joke about this. We’ll figure it out._   And then Nathan’s bizarre attempt to tell her not to trust him.  “Duke, I told him about the diary, but I never, ever thought or said – I know that’s not you.” 

A couple hours ago she would have sworn Duke could never kill anyone.  Not even to save them.  Now… that certainty was gone.  It hadn’t been him.  Two years ago.

Duke turned his back to her, still sitting but no longer able to face her. “I swore I wouldn’t turn into him,” dawning realization, horror-edged. At last, it was starting to penetrate; what he’d done, what he’d become. No need to ask who he meant. His father, Simon Crocker, who had killed the Troubled to ‘save’ them and left instructions for Duke to kill her.

“I swore it.  I meant it.”  He put the heels of his hands to his eyes.  “Jesus, I thought – You weren’t here and Nathan…”

“What about Nathan?” 

“He checked out, for like a year.  He looked for you.  We all did, but there was just _nothing._   He…”  Duke’s hand waved in the air, words useless and out of reach.  He turned to look at her, serious, and for the first time since she’d been back, she recognized him.  “Audrey, go look at what this town is like without you.  Come back and tell me what I should have done.”

 

It was a little like a Tim Burton version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ – not Frank Capra’s.   Bizarre, razor-edged, and no guarantee of a happy ending.

The harbor was still there, but there were only about half the boats there used to be.  The town looked as pretty as ever, but half the shops were closed.  The remaining ones, almost all of them, had either a tattoo sticker in the window, or a tattoo with a circle and slash through it.  Troubled welcome, Troubled not welcome.  Mostly not welcome.  Few tourists, even on a sunny day in mid-summer.  Of the people who were on the street, they tended to keep their heads down and walk with brisk steps – getting where they needed to without wasting time with little things.  Like saying hello.

The Good Shepherd had a new pastor. They were still strictly anti-Troubled but Reverend Sandra Okundaye at least wasn’t agitating or promoting violence by her congregation.  Her husband, Habib, Nigerian born, was a drunken unemployed lout whom Nathan suspected of marrying her just for citizenship.  What she got out of the deal wasn’t clear, except for the occasional trip to the emergency room.

Nathan concentrated on the road as he drove, and pointed out some of the changes, the various Troubles they’d run into, the more ordinary police incidents.  Most public gatherings were cancelled nowadays.  It was too dangerous, and people just didn’t come out for them much anyway.

It was a little shocking, even to him, to see the town through Audrey’s eyes, as she must see it now.

She was looking at him, though, not the town so much.  It made driving … difficult.

Finally – “Nathan, enough.  Take me home.”

 

It was only when he shoved the Bronco into park in his own driveway that he thought she must have meant her own home.  The apartment above the Grey Gull.  He opened his mouth to apologize, but she was already sliding out the passenger door, pushing it open past the squealing damage to the hinges, and assessing his house.

Inside, he was strangely grateful for Dana’s appearance a few weeks before.  It had given him a grace period to dry out and clean up.  The house was neat – bachelor bare and unimproved from when he’d bought it some years ago, but a long way from the sty it had been. Audrey smiled reassurance back at him as she wandered in, explored from kitchen to living room to the deck, throwing the sliding doors back and leaving them open.

He saw the house through her eyes as well.  Unloved.  A TV he did not watch.  A fireplace he did not use.  Furniture he did not sit in.  The deck was in desperate need of stripping and refinishing, still covered in pine needles from the previous year.  The barbeque hadn’t been used in years.

There was beer in the fridge, along with a half empty jar of pickles and some moldy cheese.  He rubbed at the back of his neck as he offered her one.

“Do you want a glass?”

She flicked a look up at him, away again.  “Do you have one?”

“One, maybe.”  In fact, his kitchen was adequately stocked. Dishes, cutlery, glasses and cups.  He wasn’t much of a cook, but he could manage to feed himself. And not just ‘Chicken Ding’ as his father had called it – microwave meals from a box – that the Chief had survived on after his mother had died.

She smiled, shook her head.  Drank from the bottle without comment.  They both knew –

Nathan felt something tighten painfully around his heart.  She knew what he meant. Automatically. He knew that she knew.  It was really her.  Audrey.  She knew him, understood him.  It was really her.

“Parker,” he started – and then didn’t know why he said that.  Then he did. He wanted his partner right now, even more than his lover.  He was in over his head here and he needed his partner’s help.

With a little surprised mew, she turned and hugged him.  Both elbows around his neck, like she was drowning herself and he’d suddenly appeared to rescue her.

He held her tight, not letting go even after she would have released him.  Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.  Took the bottle from her.  Now, he wanted his lover.

 

Audrey decided not to decide anything.  Not tonight.  Not now. Right now, in Nathan’s arms as he carried her – to his bed, she assumed – right now there was nothing wrong with her world or her life that mattered more than this.  This wouldn’t solve anything, either, they both knew that, but for right now, she didn’t care.

She smiled at his embarrassment for his unmade bed.  She didn’t care about that.  Her stomach growled a little as he put her down on her own feet again, just long enough to pull off her – Dana’s actually – tight fitting knit shirt.  She herself would never have chosen something so form fitting.  He laughed and knelt to kiss her stomach.  “Later, I promise,” he told it, not her.

Oh, god.  Heat jolted her, top to bottom, from the inside out.  “Nathan,” streaking her hands through his hair.  “Nathan, wait.”

His fingers stilled above the zipper to her pants.  He held his ear to her belly and she could feel his trembling, fast running breaths across her skin.  She could only imagine that this was something close to what he felt when she touched him, electric and terrifying, alive and hair-raising.

“Duke and ….  They -”  He’d said earlier Duke had fallen in love, loved her. 

“Yes.”

With her body.  With this body they both occupied.  Shared.  “Do you mind?”

He turned the other side of his face to her skin, slid it along her belly in pure sensual stimulation, the way she might have – and had done – with shaved legs and clean sheets.  That thought, even more than the sensation, made her insides curl up tight in anticipation.  “No,” he said.

A little, she heard.  Maybe more than a little, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

“Do you?” he asked, shining blue up at her.

She held his head back against her belly, and it rumbled again.  Did Dana never feed this body, _their_ body?  They both laughed, and Nathan resumed kissing her there, stripping off tight jeans, revealing lacy underwear that was little more than decoration.

And Dana shaved.

Audrey had never bothered.  It had almost never occurred to Audrey the workaholic ex-FBI agent, and she’d certainly never followed through with the thought.  It was inconvenient, at the very least, and she was too self-conscious.  Shy.  Not with other people, but in facing herself in the mirror – that she was a woman who thought about sex.

But when Nathan’s tongue found her clit, just standing there, her knees buckled and she cried out.

Nathan held her up until her legs supported her again, nipped at her flesh, so lightly.  She could feel his excitement like it radiated from him, that he could do this to her.  Audrey wanted to call it an out-of-body experience, as he did it again, licking at her, rubbing his stiffened tongue along the groove of her folds.  Except that it was exactly the opposite.  This was her body’s reaction to him, quite separate from her consciousness.

She stopped him, stepped away from him.

She did mind.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

She did mind.

She did not mind that Duke had touched her, known her – this body – even without her consent or knowledge.  She minded that Dana had. That this other consciousness, some other woman, had invaded, not her body, but her mind.

He took a moment to process, she gathered up her clothes. Struggled with trembling fingers to put them on again. They got to their feet at the same time, running into each other on the way up. He held her elbows, she breathed in his scent and regretted her choice, wanted him all over again.

So much for not making any decisions.  She escaped out of the bedroom as he went to the bathroom.

 

Nathan found her in his office, staring at the walls, her arms wrapped around herself.  It was something of an intimidating sight, he admitted, if not a testament to insanity.  Hopefully less ‘beautiful mind’ than actual complicated conspiracy.  At first glance there wasn’t much difference – but he’d spent two years working on it, everything and anything, everyone, that could possibly be related to her disappearance.  Pictures of people, Herald articles, police reports from now and from other Troubled times.  Pinned, highlighted, underlined, and yes, actual string threaded between connections he’d thought he’d made.

None of it had led anywhere.

At first he’d been sure it was leftover followers of the Rev.  Who else would have motive?  After the clean-up at the shed, so many of them had been jailed – but there was no way to tell how many were left.  And then there were the mysterious shooters from the lockdown at the station – what kind of people would be willing to shoot at police and civilians;  snipers under orders from someone they obeyed unconditionally, who disappeared like smoke immediately afterward.  Dwight had counted at least four of them. Could have been more.  Those weren’t just guys from the Rev’s church either.  Nathan couldn’t have named four men from Haven with that kind of shooting ability, let alone lack of conscience – not to his knowledge.  Where they came from, where they went, he still didn’t know.

What they did have in common was a distinct lack of Troubled ability.

No one who could erase memories.

Though it had occurred to him, belatedly, he likely wouldn’t remember if he had met such a person.

No one who could implant memories.

Ditto as above.  He’d thought that the two were probably the same Trouble, but now, maybe not.  If Audrey had been … covered over… with Dana, without being erased first, that could explain the situation they found themselves in right now.  And the other Audrey had been erased, without any other memories implanted.

And then there was motive.  Why, in God’s name?  Why take her away, why bring her back?  And were those actions from the same force, or were they the result of opposing forces – one side who wanted her here, one side who didn’t?

They both jumped at the sound of a doorbell, and a knock.

“Pizza’s here,” Nathan said.

She came over and stood under his chin.  A smile played on her lips, in her eyes, there and gone, and wow, back again.  “You remember when I told you I love you?”

“Vaguely.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, a brief peck of thunder.  “I love you.”

 

Pizza and beer.  And more beer and Audrey started to feel human again.  Odd phrase.  Didn’t know what to call what she’d felt before.  Freakish and inside out.  She rested her head on her arm, which was stretched out along the top of Nathan’s sofa.  Stretched out in his direction, all unconsciously.  He sat in a different chair entirely.  Barely looked at her, while she couldn’t take her eyes off  him.

Though, right now, she could barely keep her eyes open.

He looked… careworn. Like a hundred miles of bad road.  Two years of bad road.  She wanted to apologize; he was someone she was supposed to take care of too, and she hadn’t been here.  Knew he wouldn’t take it from her though.

“Are you drunk?”

She laughed.  “A little.”

“What would you say if you were a lot drunk?”

“A little.”

He looked down at his hands, resting on the armrest.  Which is what they were for, after all.  She wanted to be held by him, tightly and securely so that she never slipped away again.  Never let go. But she knew it was much more for him, just touching her was much more for him.  She couldn’t play with that kind of fire, not right now, not yet.

Not when there was someone else inside her.

She didn’t own anything.  Her apartment was rented.  Her car was leased.  Her name and her memories belonged to someone else.  Now, her body itself was not under her control.  _I know who you are_ , Nathan had told her.  How could he possibly know that when she herself had no idea?

But she was here, now.  That other woman was not. 

“Audrey –”

“Nathan,” she interrupted.  There was a tone in his voice she didn’t want to hear.  That she just couldn’t deal with right now.  He was girding his loins for some sort of battle, as if he feared he would not return from it. And his loins had so much better uses.  “Nathan, if you don’t take me to bed right this minute you might never get another chance.”

 

He woke up alone.  He knew that before he opened his eyes.  It was full daylight and he was alone.

In his dreams he could feel again.  Usually.  Dreams worked that way – he could feel her and the sun at the same time, feel sand beneath his feet and her laughter warming him.  He’d run after her and catch her in the sea, maybe getting a kiss before she slipped away forever.  Usually not.  Sometimes a seal would turn to look back at him, once, before diving away forever. But the water was cold, and he could always feel it.

He couldn’t feel anything now.

“Nathan, you lazy sack of bones.  I know you’re awake.  Are you out of coffee too?”

She screeched as he reached out and grabbed her, hauled back down to the bed, and screamed laughingly as he started munching on that place on her neck that always made her nuts.  His leg over hers to prevent her kicking, her beating hands harmless against him.

Her screams quieted, turned into moans, her kicks into twisting seeking strokes of feet and legs against his.

He paused, for breath more than anything, for his own sanity.

“Don’t stop now,” she murmured.

“Do you remember when I said I love you?”

She cocked her head at him. “Did you?”

Didn’t she?  “I love you.”

Her smile grew slowly, until he grew embarrassed at how he had surprised her, and pleased her.  Then she let him off the hook.  “Tell me something I don’t know,” with a tug at his ear.  “Like where is the coffee?”

 


	2. Under The Volcano

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Double, double, toil and trouble;  
> Fire burn, and caldron bubble

Nathan opened Duke’s cell, slid the door wide.  “You’re free to go.”

Duke didn’t get up right away, then he did, slowly, looking between him and Audrey.

“The coroner is calling it death by misadventure.  That stupid helmet he wore – it cut him while he was resisting arrest,” Audrey said.  “His parents are dead.  His only friend at school is dead.  The former hostages know how dangerous he was.  No one is going to mourn him.”

Or lead an inquiry into police actions for his death, Nathan thought.

“So that’s that?  Just another mess swept under the rug?” Duke said.

“I can keep you here if you like,” Nathan threatened.

Audrey stepped between them.  “Duke, take it and run.  It’s the best you’re going to get.  Nathan,”  She pushed him away from the cell door.  He looked away from her judgment.  He knew this was as much his fault as Duke’s.

“Duke,” she said, over her shoulder at him, halfway out.  “I meant what I said.  Never again.”

“You’re welcome,” Duke replied, dripping.  Looking at Nathan.  “Always a pleasure.”

 

“Nathan, are we going to have to talk about boundaries?”  They were in her office.  He was sitting on her desk.  His desk was in his office, on the other side of the wall.  She was trying to get caught up on being a police officer again after two years away – supposedly on recall to the FBI, for anyone who dared to ask.  Search, what search?  She wasn’t allowed to talk about it. But there was still a whack of paperwork to get through, including her weapon recertification.

Which, wouldn’t really hurt if she went out to the range and shot a few things, she thought, instead of just filling in the form and handing it over for Nathan’s signature.

She drew a heart on his pants leg with her pen until he stood.  Not much of an improvement, when he put both hands down and leaned over her.

“There’s room in my office for both desks.”

“Okay!” That was it.  She pushed her chair back, and pushed him out of _her_ office, “Out.” shutting the door on him.  She loved him, but really.  She needed space – it was crowded enough in her skin without him trying to climb inside as well.

But even after that she couldn’t settle.

Shooting at things suddenly seemed like a really good idea.

 

Haven didn’t have a proper shooting range, just some paper covered wooden outlines leaned up against bales of hay in the middle of an abandoned quarry. There was still something to be said for the zen of target practice. Thinking about stuff just didn’t work. You had to concentrate, and let go, at the same time. Breathe, aim, squeeze. Breathe, aim, squeeze. Searching for that moment, those few heartbeats where muscle control and intention met; back of gun, front of gun and target all lined up, steady pull without anticipation, BANG. And do it all over again.

She went through a whole box of ammo before she knew it.  It didn’t count as an official recert with no one there to verify it but it had accomplished the objective.  Her arms quivered from the exertion and her chest felt a little beaten on from the repeated blasts.  Nothing had really changed, but she felt a little more in control, better armed – so to speak – to deal with things.

She was two people.  In one body.  Anywhere else in the world that was a psychiatric condition.  In Haven, that was Tuesday. 

She’d been taken, abducted, and apparently returned with this new personality and memory.  But otherwise, to her knowledge, unhurt.  That… she didn’t know what to think about that.  But she was beginning to resent the fact that someone else was pulling her strings.

That was actually a place to focus.  Nathan had a start on it, but obviously there was something going on that was bigger than just police work could solve.  If that was all it took, then Nathan would have solved it.  They had to get at this not as a crime but as a Trouble.  As The Troubles.

She’d spotted the Bronco on the rim of the quarry a little while ago, it was gone now.  She’d left a grocery list on her desk when she left, and a note that said  ‘Think Food Coma’.  Hopefully he was out shopping how.

She stopped by her apartment to shower and change out of gunpowder soaked clothes.  The restaurant wasn’t open yet, but Duke had the music on loud, uncomfortably so, and playing some screeching death metal or something.  He knew she was there, his back to her, she knew he knew as she waited by the door, arms crossed.

Even just turning down the music outlined his anger, as he turned to her. “Something I can help you with, Officer Agent Parker?”

The nickname made her smile, though that probably wasn’t what he intended.  “When you’re done,” acting out, “I’m still here.  I’ll listen if you have something you want to say.”

“If you’re still here, then I won’t have anything to say.”

She nodded, bit her lip.  She understood.  It still hurt, as it was intended to. She was halfway back to her car before she realized she had something to say herself.

This time he didn’t see her coming, and came out of the kitchen with a baseball bat when she turned the music down herself. Pulled up short, but the murderous violence in him was still plain to see. She plunged on regardless. “You know what, Duke, no one intended this. Me, here, right now. It was supposed to her. I don’t know why, but I intend to find out. But I’m the mistake. Me. Not her. Whoever did this – they wanted her. Wallow if you want to. Dana – ” Breathe. First time she’d actually named her … other half, her sister traveller. “Dana never had a chance in all of this.”

Audrey left without looking back.

 

If she thought the Haven Herald, that beacon of misinformation and obfuscation, would at least still be familiar, she was mistaken.  She sensed something off as soon as she walked in; colder, emptier.  Dave Teagues, alone in the office, greeted her with the same favorite uncle smile.  “Officer Parker, what can I do – No, wait, you’re the other one, aren’t you?  Duke’s friend.  I’m Dave Teagues.  Owner and operator of the Haven Herald.”  He held out his hand.

Audrey shifted her blazer back to reveal the gun on her hip.  “Right the first time, Dave.”

There was some satisfaction in seeing Dave Teagues at a complete loss for words.  And turn white as … a ghost.  “So you knew about Dana?”

“We never met.”

She ignored the words, kept the meaning.  Yes, he had.

“Do you know who kidnapped me?”

He shook his head.  “No.”

She couldn’t tell if he was lying. She never could.  But then, the Teagues didn’t usually lie outright, they just didn’t tell the truth.  “Do you know why?”

“I can guess.”

Which, she noted carefully, could be prevarication even if he did know for certain.  “Tell me your guess.”

“You’re supposed to kill Duke Crocker.  To end the Troubles.  They knew you, as Audrey, never would, so…”  He drifted off, seeing her reaction.  “Didn’t Nathan tell you?”

“Where is Vince?”  She ignored the implications, the way she would have a two-year-old’s tantrum.

“You should really talk to Nathan –”

“How about you tell me, for once.”  Audrey deliberately kept her voice neutral and her arms crossed.  He would not rile her or distract her.

“Nathan threatened to shoot him on the spot if he ever showed his face in town again.”  Dave sat down.  He was the boy, and his playthings had grown up and left him behind, not the other way around.  “He retired to the cabin.  He’s writing a novel.”

She stared at him.  Older, smaller, lonelier.  Was it just the passage of time, or something she did?  Did she somehow subtly corrupt every person she came into contact with, so that they eventually turned hollow and undermined?  “Will you answer one question straight out, for me?”

He cleaned smudged glasses at her.  Didn’t quite shrug. “Ask.”

“Who’s side are you on?”

“Haven’s.”

 

“You knew.”

“Vince told me.”

“You talked to Vince.”

“About Dana.”

“I should get you a cowboy hat and you can pretend to be that guy from Justified.”

“What?”

“You’re not some wild west Sheriff.  You should let him come back to town.  There’s no law –”

“Against resurrecting the dead? Abuse of a corpse. Class D – a year less a day, and two thousand dollars. Not good enough.”

“Still not a capital crime.”

“No.”

“Nathan,”

“Audrey, don’t ask me to be reasonable about this.  You weren’t here.  You didn’t see –”

“No I wasn’t here!” she exploded.  “Is that everyone’s excuse?  All of you – did you all lose your minds just because I wasn’t here?  Duke kills people, you – you’re killing yourself, bit by bit,  the town is torn in two. People who were our friends are now enemies… Jesus, Nathan.  I would be flattered at how you all need me – except that I’m so ashamed it makes me sick.”

 

She sat exactly where Dana had, that first time. 

Duke stopped in his tracks, making Concha run into him from behind, a tray full of drinks in her hand that magically stayed upright.  She swore at him in Spanish, a tumbling creek of liquid sound he fully understood, but easily forgave.  “Loco,” she muttered, glancing between him and Audrey.  “Estás loco.”

“Si,” he agreed.  “Por ella.”

“She will break your heart,” she warned, checking her shirt for spills.

Duke looked down at the lion-hearted small woman. Who knew, maybe she could tell the future.  This was Haven.  “Are you married?” he asked.

“Si.  Yes.” He could see heat under her café au lait skin.

“Then I guess I’m stuck with her.”

She sniffed and turned away.  “Loco.”  But she did so with a smile.

“Trouble in paradise?” Duke questioned Audrey, sliding a plate of appetizers in front of her.  Nathan was not within hovering distance. That probably meant they’d argued about something.  Probably him, and that didn’t hurt one bit.

She snorted.  “If there is, they’re on their own.”  Finished off her wine.  “We have to talk.”

“The worst four words in the English language.  We. Have. To. Talk.”  He ate from her plate.  “No, we don’t.  We eat, we drink, maybe we even dance a little dance.  Then you tell me what you have to tell me, and then we go our separate ways.”  Actually, the shrimp and escargot thing needed a rethink.  “Do you like these?” he asked, holding one up for her.

She ate it off his fork.  Grimaced.  Spit it out into a napkin.

“That’s what I thought.”

He watched as she struggled with the idea of relaxing, of not getting to the point right away and getting out of there.  “No dancing,” she warned, but with a smile.

 

Duke poured out a full measure of rum over a tall glass of ice.  “This is from Dwight – bullets that turn around and hit me.”  He poured one of tequila.  “Zombies.  Doctor Arnold Greenberg.  Heart surgeon.  I figured that since I wasn’t likely to take up heart surgery –”

“You could take his Trouble.”

Duke poured vodka.  “He’s a very good heart surgeon, actually. Still is.  Vodka for Rhonda – who…”  He hesitated, and Audrey was caught by the sadness there.  He was so much better than even this morning, back to someone she liked and trusted, but they would still occasionally stumble on these deep black pits that the Troubles had ripped out of his heart.

“Rhonda who…?”

“Who thought she could save the world.  She gave it a damn good try.”  He toasted her, drank the shot, then poured another.  “For her ability to heal.”

He poured in a shot of triple sec.  “For the levitating small objects curse…”

“Really?”

He grinned, picked out a lemon wedge without touching it, just holding his hand over the condiments container, dropped it in the glass.

Audrey laughed like it was a magic trick, then covered her mouth. Eyes flashed to him.  Troubles were not laughing matters.  Not supposed to be, anyway.  “How is that a curse?”

“Try picking up a pen with it, or coins.  And it’s too weak for anything that might be useful.”

“How-?”

He skipped over that, a story for another time maybe, maybe when he was not so intent on entertaining her.

“Gin for Susan, used to waitress here, who completely freaked when she found out she was going to give birth to a litter of twelve.”

“Twelve… babies?!”

“As far as I know, babies.  Humans.  I tell you, if I ever gain the ability to get pregnant, I am so completely screwed.”

Audrey nearly choked, holding that in.  Tears leaked out.

 “She ended up with twins.  Of course, then there’s dear old dad.”  He poured in the sour mix. Shook it. Topped it with a half shot of Coke.  A straw and a cherry.  “The Duke Crocker.  It’s the cherry that really makes it.”

“You’re just trying to get me drunk,” Audrey said.  Took a sip.  She’d had Long Island Iced Tea before.  She’d been to college.  “It’s good.”  Sweet, smooth.  Effortless.  Just like the man.

“With a killer kick.”

 _Oh._   “Duke –”

“The point is – you can’t guess the final product from the list of ingredients.”  Sometimes it’s shrimp and escargot, sometimes it’s Long Island Iced Tea.  “I don’t know what I am anymore, either,” he said.

 

They didn’t dance, but they did have a long lingering meal, they had drinks, they talked about him, they even talked a little about Dana.

“What did she think,” Audrey finally asked, “about being… us?”

Duke leaned forward.  “We didn’t get that far,” he admitted.  “We didn’t know about you, now, of course.  And telling someone they’re a copy –”  His hand flopped over helplessly.  He watched her reaction.  “It’s not easy.”

Audrey giggled.  “It’s not easy being one, let me tell you.”  And then clamped her mouth shut, eyes going wide at what she’d just admitted.  Aloud.  Duke smiled to himself.  Mission accomplished.  It was rare that anyone got to see behind the curtain with her.  Anyone not named Wuornos, that is.  She had charm and snark and a dazzling display of confidence and competence upfront so that most people never even realized it was all surface.  But he’d seen enough – when she opened up and let the Troubled touch her, when she reached out for them in return – that he knew at least what he was missing.

She wanted his friendship.  Demanded it.  He had a few demands of his own.

Sitting out on the deck, Duke had heard the Bronco pull up some minutes ago.  Nathan finally stepped out into view at her laugh.  Audrey took a deep steadying breath at his approach, stared him down as he invited himself and sat with them.

Nathan handed Duke a picture of a soldier in full combat gear.  A female soldier, Duke realized after a second.  Army Specialist Dana Bellamy, combat medic, along with stats and records on the back.  Silver Star.  KIA December 18, 2011.

Duke stared at it.  Handed it over to Audrey. 

Killed in Action.

“It just came in this afternoon,” Nathan said.  “She told me she was a medic.  It didn’t take long after that.”

Not his Dana, Duke told himself.  She didn’t look anything like Dana.  Or Audrey.  His Dana…  He was shocked at how shocked he was.  His Dana was still alive in Audrey somewhere.  Somehow.  Wasn’t she?

Audrey put her hand over his.  “Are you all right?”

He smiled for her.  Forced it.  “Of course.  This doesn’t change anything.”  He hadn’t even considered the ‘real’ Dana Bellamy as a flesh and blood person before this.  His Dana was a copy of this person but she was just as real as Audrey was.

“You said we had to talk,” Duke said.  Hours ago, when she’d first arrived.  “Was it this?”

Audrey stared at him with shiny eyes.  Shifted between him and Nathan.  “I’m afraid so.”

 

“Say it.”

“Audrey…”

“I told you so.  Say it.”

“I’m not going to say it.”  He had told her so.  She had insisted on telling Duke ‘the truth’ about what the Teagues said about him, about ending the Troubles.  About her necessary hand in it.  They couldn’t keep this secret from him.

Aside from the fact that they had no way to verify what the Teagues said, and they were never the most reliable source, Nathan had argued that it was a burden Duke didn’t deserve.

Possibly couldn’t handle, given his recent episode.

And in the very darkest corner of his mind, he considered that Duke could take it as a threat – that if Audrey was coming hunting for him, to cure the Troubles for all, then he would fight for his own survival and strike out at her first.

He wasn’t going to say it.  But he was very glad she had changed her mind.


	3. The Invisible Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When our actions do not,  
> Our fears do make us traitors.
> 
> \--Lady Macduff, Act IV, scene ii

Audrey tried not to wake him, sliding out of his bed in the very early morning.

It didn’t work, of course.  “You don’t have to go.”

She grinned at him, though he was face down and his eyes were closed.  Continued getting dressed.  “I know I have my own office but I think my co-workers will still appreciate it if I manage to shower and change my clothes at least once in a while.”  She leaned back and kissed his shoulder, the closest part she could reach.  “And, you  know, the sleeping with the boss thing.  Looks bad.”

“If everyone doesn’t already know, they are worse cops than even I thought.”  Blue eyes watched her now.

“Nathan…”

“Audrey.”

She danced away from the seriousness and meaning in his expression.  Not willing to talk about it, she just kept going.

 

She met Duke on the way back down, fresh and bright. “Good morning.  You’re early,” she greeted him.

“You’re early. I am very very late.”  His look was complicated – and a little bleary.  “I hope we didn’t keep you up,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were home.  I figured you would be,” shrugged, “busy.”

“You didn’t.”

He looked up the stairs as if waiting for someone – Nathan – to follow her down.

“Just me,” Audrey said.

His eyes narrowed as he easily read, if not a walk of shame, then that he had just missed one.  “I take it you will still want the room for another month, then?”

“You kept it, empty, for two years while I was gone.”

“Not the point.”

Not now and not then.  He could find a renter any time he wanted. “Going to work now.  Good night, Duke.”

“Good morning, Audrey.”

 

He called her Parker at work.  He kept his distance, and kept his hands safely tucked away somewhere – in his pockets, under his arms.  Anywhere except where they wanted to be, reaching out for her, making sure she was still within reach.  Still there.  He could look at her with expression appropriately schooled, not lingering, not avoiding.

When Benjy’s cows got loose and wandered down Main Street, he leaned back against his truck and laughed as she joined in with the rest of his department to try to round them up again.  It wasn’t until evening milking time rolled around that the cows turned around – of their own accord.  She seemed proud of herself, nonetheless, nose tilted up at him afterward, dancing eyes and curled lips, as he locked the gate again.

Proud of herself for making him laugh, he knew, as if the whole day had been some sort of performance.  Perhaps it was.  All he knew was that it was almost as exhausting pretending for her sake, as it likely had been for her, trying so hard for him.

They were both trying so hard, but really, Nathan couldn’t figure out exactly what they were trying to do.

He brought her a drink, after dinner, while she stared at the walls of his home office.  Dana Bellamy’s picture was up there now too.  Another question mark. 

Only after she accepted the drink did he allow his hands to follow their desire, to reach for her, to slide along her arms, around her waist and squeeze out the distance between them, until she leaned back on him, rested her head against his chest.  That was all he’d been trying to do, all day, and forced himself not to.

He waited the five minutes, some days ten, until she relaxed, her mind shifted tracks, turned itself from the hamster wheel it normally ran on – around and around and around about the Troubles – and powered down.  Until she saw him.

That was what made it all worth it, when she turned around in his arms, said his name.  Turned to him.  He honestly didn’t know what he had that she wanted, possibly needed.  But simply that she did turn to him was all that he really wanted.  Whatever she wanted she could have, but some days he wished she would just tell him what that was.

So when she woke up, every night, in the middle of the night – got out of bed, got dressed and went back to her apartment… Nathan knew there was something there that she still wanted.  Or needed.  That what he gave her was insufficient.  Possibly inadequate.

He’d tried staying at her place – she woke up at the same time, and went out on the deck to wait until he woke, got up and got dressed himself.  Then they were off to work again, hours early.  He tried joking, and cajoling, he tried making love to her.  Last night had been his most direct attempt yet, and it had slid off – water on a duck.

He couldn’t believe she didn’t know or understand what he wanted.  He did not understand her refusal to both acknowledge what was happening and address it one way or another.

Just stay. 

That’s all he wanted. He never went back to sleep after she left and the hours ticked away glacially as he lay in bed alone until he could reasonably get up and go to work.  Before – he usually managed to anesthetize himself with alcohol enough to get through the night, and if he hadn’t there was more where that came from.  Now, all he could do was wait it out.

 

The light was on in the kitchen of the Gull when she got home.  Audrey hesitated, then gave in to her curiosity and went to see what was going on.  Duke’s Land Rover was still parked outside, alongside Dana’s parked motorcycle, so she dismissed the possibility of a break-in. Though she did make sure her weapon was handy.  Holstered, in hand, but handy. 

Duke was flat on his back, his head under a large oven and swearing like a sailor.  His hand flapped blindly for a tool, just out of reach. Every time he got close, the tool shifted just slightly away from him…  “Goddamn bastard piece of –”  She pushed it with a toe until his fingers found it.

“Good morning, Duke.”

Something rang like a bell, as he apparently jumped in surprise, more swearing.  He pushed himself out from under until he could see her.  She crouched down.

“Audrey.”  Prodded a lump forming on his forehead.

“Whatchadoin?”

“Fixing the oven.  What are you doing?”

“You know they have people who can do this sort of thing for you?”

“I sailed around the world. I can take apart and fix everything on the Rouge, and put it back together again. I can fix an oven.”

Audrey nodded.  Far be it for her to impugn a man’s mechanical ability.  “Just don’t blow up my apartment.”

Duke pushed himself all the way out from under.  Sat up and wiped his hands off on a dish rag.  Sweaty and grimy from the oven’s innards, it made her smile just to look at him.  There was just something about a man working with tools.

He looked right back.  “Good morning, Audrey.”  She didn’t fool him one bit.  “What are you doing here?”

“There’s no food in my place.”

“That will happen when you don’t live there anymore.”

“Any chance of breakfast?”

It could have gone either way.  “I might be able to find some cereal or something around here.”

“Ten minutes.  I’ll just change.”

“Into what?” Audrey heard, muttered, before she was almost, but not quite out of earshot.

 

Cereal, grilled scones and fruit and yogurt.  Divine coffee, that made her sigh, probably the best she’d ever tasted. Duke’s private stash – his own blend of Jamaican, Colombian and Kenyan.

She closed her eyes and took another sip.  “You could get rich on this alone,” she said.

“I should open up a restaurant.”

Except for the coffee, Audrey would have left at that point.  She supposed that he had been up all night wrestling with the broken equipment – that explained his short temper.  She pushed the plate of scones at him, far too much for her to eat.  “Join me?”  He wrestled with it for a moment, then sat.  He hadn’t changed, still layered in dirt, smudged face and shirt.  “It seems I never see you anymore.  Just wondering… how are you doing?”

“I’m still here.”

“Good,” she muttered.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.  To say hi.”

He leaned forward.  “I’m serious, Audrey.  It’s six o’clock in the morning.  You just left Nathan’s bed – and interrupted my work – to come say hi to me?  What do you want?”

“Dana –”  It was out before she thought, and then realized that was a good part of what she wanted.

“What about her?”

“You miss her?”

It was there on his face, and then gone again – a flash so raw it hurt her to see it. And if she didn’t herself wear Dana’s face – or Dana’s hers, it was hard to keep track – he never would have revealed even that.  “Of course.”

“Nathan –”

“Oh yeah, let’s talk about Nathan.”

She probably deserved that.  Duke was not actually her best girlfriend that she could discuss boyfriend issues with.  “Are you all right?”

Without Dana?  She had to look down, as he examined her.  It was still weird.  “It’s different for him,” Duke said, skipping stone of a conversation.  They both knew they were still talking about Nathan.

Audrey wondered briefly about Duke and Nathan.  Yin and yang.  Best friends.  Best enemies.  There was something in their relationship that she had no part of, didn’t, couldn’t touch.  And the lost years, troubled years that she had no part in had only made that more so.  Now… it would solve a lot of problems if she could just physically tear herself in two, rather than just emotionally.

Of course, that hadn’t worked out so well for whatshisname the banker.

“Why?”  Why is it different for Nathan?

“It just is.”

Duke thought that Dana was coming back.  Audrey couldn’t deny it – there was _nothing_ she could hang onto as absolutely certain in her life, her own identity the least of all.  And yet, what would happen to Nathan, with Nathan, when that occurred was a whole new worry. As if all her other worries were lonely or something.

Her phone rang with a text.  _Dead cat with force field Front St. and Williams._

She showed it to him. “Good thing you had a good breakfast.”

Dave Teagues was right about one thing, Audrey thought as she thanked him with a kiss to the cheek.  Her killing Duke was never going to happen.

 

“A force field?” she asked, laughing, as she approached.  

Nathan indicated the dead cat in the middle of the road with his open hand, then put it back in his pocket where it was normally kept.  Audrey couldn’t help it, matching his grin with hers.  Old times.  Just like old times.

The road was blocked off with a cruiser, the citizen who had reported the ‘force field’ was being talked down by Dwight, police tape was going up.  He offered her some latex gloves.

The light was particularly flattering today, Audrey thought.  Too early for the simple T-shirt and jeans – anyone else would find it chilly – but she approved of the blue of his eyes and the warmth in his smile as she walked up to him.  Usually it took him a couple hours to forgive her for walking out on him every morning.  Then again, maybe he was getting used to the idea.  He hadn’t said anything this time.

Someone cleared his throat.  Suddenly aware that they were staring at each other, yes, okay, like love-struck teenagers, they both moved apart.  “Dwight,” Nathan coughed.

“Chief.”

“Dwight.” Audrey greeted him. 

Poleaxed. That was the word.  She watched him look past the big black hair, see her.  Recognize her.  He looked like he was going to topple over with a breath.  “How ya been?”

He pulled her into a bear hug.  A sasquatch hug.  She had to practically fight her way loose.  “Better question is how have you been?” he rumbled.

“Wish I knew.”

Dwight looked from her to Nathan, back down to her.  “Nothing?”

“Not a clue.”

“Showed up a couple weeks ago as some biker chick named Dana…”

 

Audrey stepped away while Nathan filled Dwight in.  She’d already seen the trailer for this movie, and she wasn’t interested.  She was interested in the ‘force field.’  She put the gloves on.  Holding her hand out, she felt when it encountered the invisible shield that prevented anyone from touching the cat.  Hard, not electric like she’d almost expected.  Like in the movies.

Hard like metal. Exactly like metal.  She tapped it, and it rang like metal.  She ran her hands along the sides and edges of it.  Like in the shape of a small car.  Exactly like in the shape of a car.  An invisible car.

Finding the back end, she felt for the license plate.  She reached to the side of the road, dirtied a glove, and smeared the mud lightly over the plate, making the raised lettering visible.

“Huh.”  Dwight was impressed.  Nathan was already on the phone to Laverne to find out the owner and his address.  The big Viking looked down at her, evaluating.  “Welcome back, Audrey.”

 

The car belonged to one Joseph Allen, 2334 Farmers Drive. 

The door to the house was open when they arrived. Not just open; gone. Nathan pulled his gun, motioned her to the side, out of the line of fire. “Nathan, stop.”

He stopped.  He questioned with a look, but he stopped.  Audrey put her hand out, and felt the front door solid beneath her touch.  They could see straight through it, into the front room.  Things were thrown around, disarrayed.

Audrey knocked on the invisible door.  Hard.  “Mr. Allen!  Haven Police.”

Nathan put his gun away.  She stopped him from knocking himself. “Idiot.”  When he couldn’t see it, _and_ couldn’t feel it, he was just as likely to break every bone in his hand.  She didn’t regret it when he left his hand in hers.  He stood behind her.  She hid their clasped hands between them.

Good god.  They may as well have been fourteen.  Twelve.

She knocked again.  “Mr. Allen, we know you’re in there.  Why else would your front door be invisible?  I’m Audrey Parker.  I can help you.”  Nothing.  She looked at Nathan; any suggestions?

“Mr. Allen,” Nathan said, “We found your abandoned vehicle in the middle of the road, as a traffic hazard.”

“Nathan!  You’re not going to give the poor man a ticket, are you?” 

“If his car is going to take up space in my impound lot, invisible or not, he’s gonna –”

They both heard the lock turning.  Opening.  Audrey’s hand, still resting on the door, moved without her volition, following it as it opened.

“Joe Allen?”

“I don’t want a ticket.”

There was no one there.

 

Nathan was not helping, hiding his laughter under his hand.  Trying to hide his laughter, as Audrey spoke seriously and compassionately to the invisible man on the sofa opposite her.  Visible only by the compression of the cushions beneath him.  He told a woeful tale of accidentally hitting the cat, getting _so_ upset by that and then the car disappearing under his hand.  Then his clothes, then himself as he tried to figure out what had happened to him.  The Midas touch of invisibility.

He’d walked home, afraid to drive a car he could not see, when no one could see him.

Audrey offered him a pair of their vinyl crime scene gloves.  It apparently only worked with a skin touch, like many of the Troubles they had encountered. They promptly disappeared as he took them and put them on, but he could then pick up other things without them disappearing.

His life had changed, Audrey explained, but it wouldn’t last forever. Makeup would just disappear so he couldn’t really disguise his condition. But he was a shy retiring sort, created and sold stained glass art over the internet for a living. And in town. All those kitschy lighthouses and boats at sea had to come from somewhere. They would bring him some more gloves, and look in on him from time to time.

“And if you ever get the idea that you could rob a bank, or go peeping in some girls’ window,” Nathan warned, schooling his expression to serious cop face.  “Trust me. Don’t.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t.  I swear it.”

“Or drive your car.  If you really need a ride somewhere, call Dwight. He’ll understand,” Audrey offered for him.

“I will.  Thank you, thank you.  I’m so glad you were here.  I was – I was freaking out, I don’t mind saying.  I was going to do something… really stupid.”

Nathan pulled Audrey away from the invisible man evidently shaking her hand. It was too ludicrous to watch, her hand waving up and down by itself, and Nathan was going to lose what was left of his composure. “OK, we have to go.” Not to mention what could happen if they actually touched.

 

She punched him lightly in the gut on their way back to the Bronco.  “You were so not helping there. You could have at least tried to keep a straight face.”

He pulled her close as soon as they were near the truck. One hand snaked around her waist, lifted her to him.  The other then pulled the mess of her hair away from her face.  “I thought I was going to bust something.”

“That poor man…” So alone.  And now, literally, no one could even see him.

The clear sky of the morning had fulfilled its promise and the day was a scorcher; the truck’s metal skin was fiery even through her clothes as she melted against it, taking Nathan back with her.  Even that was nothing compared to the look he raked over her. She reached around his neck – but he only stood there, breathing hard, lips at her temple.

Right. Work. They were working. They were standing on the street, embracing in the middle of the day, in the middle of a shift.  This was crazy.

“Move in with me.”

What?  She gaped at him.  Didn’t realize she hadn’t spoken until she realized he was waiting for an answer.

“I’d move in with you, but I think we both know my house has more room – and I’m the one asking.”

“Nathan.”  Her voice was gone.  Barely a whisper.

“I had a plan.  I had a menu for dinner tonight.  I had a list,” he laughed at himself, “a list of good reasons why you should.  Why you have to.  I just couldn’t wait.”  They both knew what had happened the last time they had planned an actual date.  “Don’t say no because I asked you this way.”

Oh god.  “Nathan…”

“That’s not a yes.”

She could feel him stiffen and withdraw as the ‘yes’ still failed to come.  Oh god.  And it wasn’t even in her, not an apology, not even a covering salve for his exposed feelings.  She could not pretend or lie to him.  It was the Chief’s death all over again, and it was going to blow them both apart this time.  “Nathan,” she wept without tears.

“Marry me.”

She laughed outright, and beat on his chest with one closed fist.  Rubbed away tears with the other one.  “You’re a romantic bastard, Wuornos, I’ll give you that. Doubling down from moving in together?  Who could resist such an offer?”  She knew he was perfectly serious.  The only way they were getting out of this without permanent damage is if she wasn’t. “On the side of the road?”

It didn’t work. 

He let her go, stepped away. Didn’t look at her.  “Audrey.  I know this is only a pit stop for you.  You’ll go, and come back,” he took a deep breath, looked away, came back, but still didn’t look directly at her.  “Maybe as Dana, maybe someone else.  Maybe tomorrow or years from now.  But for me, this is it.  I only have – I thought I lost my chance, with you.  Now –” He stopped, tripped up on too many words and too much feeling.  “This is it, for me.  I’m asking you to marry me.”

 

 

 


	4. Body Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible  
> To feeling as to sight? or art thou but  
> A dagger of the mind, a false creation,  
> Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

The summer sun beat down on Haven like it deserved punishment.  Hard and angry.  Two weeks of record breaking heat, without even a thundershower to break the oppression.  And it always felt like thunderheads were building; even first thing in the morning it felt like the air was electric and there was weight overhead, about to fall out of the sky.  But the sky remained cloudless and empty. The air airless, without a breath of a breeze.

Nathan’s door was closed when she got in in the morning.  She could see a strip of light under the door – he was in already.  Stan didn’t smile at her, barely nodded.  Audrey forced her own smile.  The storm inside the station had yet to break as well, ringing silence between the wall separating her from Nathan that everyone knew was there even if they didn’t know the particulars of what or why.

She’d been gone for two years, back for four weeks – and from the outside it probably looked like she’d taken up with Duke, then hopped over to the Chief, and then dumped him for Duke again.  Only because Duke still talked to her – even it was with narrowed watchful eyes – and because that was where she actually lived.  Paid rent, at least.  She lived… somewhere else.  Somewhere on the other side of that wall.

Audrey knocked before she entered, waited for the barked “Come,”, walked into Nathan’s office.  The way his chin came up at the sight of her was like a broken rib, twisted inside her unexpectedly. Like he was defending himself, shying away from a blow.  From her.  No T-shirt today, despite the heat.  Buttoned down shirt, long sleeves.  Pity. “What is it, Parker?”

 _I’m sorry._   “You know that list of Haven families you have?”  On his wall, in his home office.

“What about it?”

 _I want to come back._   “I was wondering if I can get a copy of it.”

“Why?”

 _I want to stay_.  “This heat wave.  I think it’s a Trouble.”

Shrug. “It’s July.”

She offered him a stack of paper.  “I did some digging.  There’s been nothing like this in the entire state of Maine in three hundred years.  Not for this long, not without at least some thundershower activity, and not such high temperatures.  And look at the pattern –”

“That’s why it’s called ‘record-breaking’, Parker.”

Disdain.  Sarcasm.  Audrey blinked at him.  She’d never heard that tone from Nathan before, and certainly not directed at her.  “I was thinking – you know how Duke and –” White hot heat from Nathan at that name, cut her like a torch and she stumbled.  Drew breath and kept on going.  She knew what it looked like from the outside.  She couldn’t imagine that Nathan believed it too.  “Duke and Ian Haskell were second cousins.  Ian could only absorb one Trouble at a time.  But Duke…”  They both knew what Duke could do.

This was his cue to jump in with his recall on their weather related troubles, cases they’d worked together, or even ones he’d encountered while she was gone. Troubles were passed on in families. Families branched out in all directions, and it seemed possible to her that a curse could branch out similarly, changing form with different generations and different branches of the family tree. So if Marion Caldwell could call up violent weather with her moods, she might be related to someone who … brought on droughts and/or heat waves.

It was a working theory.  Something that Audrey wanted to toss around with Nathan, as her partner, work it out.  She had no other idea how to approach it.  It wasn’t as if there was a crime scene…

He only looked at her, not volunteering anything.

That just put her back up.  She knew he was stubborn.  She knew he was proud, and hurt.  Male, proud, stubborn and hurt was a bad combination at any time.  Male, proud, stubborn, hurt  and Wuornos was just redundant.  And a little ridiculous.

“I’m not going to say yes because you’re being an ass, Nathan.”  She didn’t have the height to lean over him, so she leaned over his desk. He was seated, it was the closest she could get.  “Fire me, I dare you.  I’ll sue you for sexual harassment.”

Blue heat strobed at her, as he looked at her, saw her for the first time since he’d asked her to marry him.  Since she’d turned him down.

“It’s at my house.”

… the list.  Focus. The list was at his house. The list that she’d wanted because of a Trouble.  A Trouble about heat.  Heat quite different – and the same somehow – from the heat that turned over like a lazy cat in the sun at the way he looked at her.  Made her want to stretch out on her back, with arms over her head and toes pointed as far as they could go.

To expose her belly to him, just so that he could scratch it.

 _Nathan_.  “I could pick it up tonight,” she offered.

“I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”

This was why sleeping with your partner was a bad idea.  Sleeping with your boss even worse. Because when it went bad it took everything else with it.  “We could go get it now.”  Together.  Back at his place where she could shed all her clothes, and then strip him piece by piece of all of his…

Ah.  She saw it in him, the temptation.  He still wanted her, and pride warred with… everything else.  She nearly had him.

Just at that moment though, Laverne’s voice broke over the radio, broke as in broken, as in sharp as broken glass – no introduction, not her voice at all – “Babyinacar!” and a location.

 

Someone got there before they did, smashed the window and got the baby out.  Paramedics arrived almost immediately.  Took the baby from the man’s arms.  Audrey and Nathan swung out of the Bronco at the same time, Nathan froze by the car door, looking at him.

Audrey thanked him, while they both waited for the verdict from the paramedics – but the ambulance pulled away with sirens wailing, and they had no answers.  The man admitted he’d called 911.  And then thought to smash the window.  He should have done that first, he said, as if blaming himself. As if it was his fault. He was just visiting, didn’t know the identity of baby or parents.  Just walking by and saw –

Audrey assured him he had done the right thing.  If anything, she had some responsibility for this.  She’d been working on the Trouble aspect for nearly a week, alone.  If she’d just gone to Nathan sooner they might have cleared it up already.

Nathan still stood and stared at them.

A woman’s scream interrupted everyone.  She stood in the parking lot, forty feet away, bags dropped the ground, and fell to her knees, screaming.  “My baby!”

The mother.  And the horror of leaving her baby alone in a car on a sunny day while she went shopping landed on her, nearly breaking every bone in her body.

“Someone put her in a cell!” Nathan shouted at the half dozen officers assembled.  “And lose the goddamn key.”

The woman was hustled out of the Chief’s sight – probably the best for all concerned.  His other officers may or may not have known about Nathan’s particular ‘condition’ where babies were concerned.  They did know that he’d been particularly short and foul-tempered of late, and that the storm clouds threatened but had not broken yet.

Audrey felt no need to defend the woman from Nathan’s wrath.  It was inexcusable.  Somehow, the man did; he rubbed at his forehead and looked around as if lost.  “I’m sure she didn’t mean to… It’s eight o’clock in the morning.  How can it be this hot?”

How can you find _someone_ who made it this hot?

Someone who was new in town, maybe, who maybe brought his Trouble with him…?

She offered him her hand.  “Audrey Parker, Haven PD.”

“Dirk Harrison.”

Nathan appeared behind Dirk’s back, suddenly unfrozen.  “Mr. Harrison, we will need to take your statement down at the station.”

Audrey glared at him.  What the hell?  Witnesses were not dragged down to the police station to be interrogated.  The police went to them, politely, sat on their couches and thanked them for their cooperation and support. Heroes who had probably just saved a baby’s life were given plaques and handshake photos in the Herald.  What the hell was Nathan’s problem?

“Uh, sure.  Okay.”

 

Another disadvantage to falling out with a boss you used to sleep with is that he was free to assign you to interviewing the guilt ridden, nearly hysterical mother of an infant left in a car on a hot summer day, while he talked to the  very attractive witness and hero…  Not that Nathan would notice, of course. Though he had seemed intent on keeping her and Mr. Harrison as far apart as possible.

Audrey had noticed.  Very tall, well-built, extremely well-built, calfskin leather voice.  Maybe that explained … no.  Nathan had reacted – overreacted – before that.

It was probably just as well Nathan wasn’t here.  He would have strangled the woman himself. Audrey only wanted to. 

All the mother could do was go on about ‘who would do this’, ‘why would anyone do this’?

“You left your baby in the car.”  Interrogation technique 101.  Get the suspect to agree to something.  Start with common ground and build on that.

The woman nodded.  Audrey could only see the top of her head, the woman was bent over, seated, as nearly fetal as she could get.  Looking at the floor.  Looking at nothing in particular, but in the direction of her shoes.  Worn flip-flops, messy stringy hair.  And, though Audrey hadn’t seen it directly for some twenty minutes, her face was an unattractive combination of white as a sheet and puffy red from crying. Tear streaks and running nose, and a mass of used tissues on the table beside her.

“You went into the store.”

The woman nodded again.

“You locked your car as you left it.  You know how it is.  It’s automatic.  A habit.”

“ _I didn’t_!” she wailed, and started crying again.  “She was asleep.” Hiccup.  “She hadn’t-” hiccup, “slept in,” hiccup, “days.” Breath.  “It’s so hot.”  Crying without restraint now.  “I couldn’t wake her up.”

“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?”  The baby was fine now.  It was unlikely she’d been ill before.

The woman looked at Audrey as if noticing something for the first time.  She wiped her tears away.  “You don’t have kids.”

Audrey reacted, when she knew she shouldn’t have.  Never give the suspect the power in the interview.  Always stay in control of the conversation.  “No, I don’t have kids.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.”  And with that, it was like she shut the door in Audrey’s face.  “I want a lawyer.”

Audrey shut off the recorder. Got up and left her, interview over.

Nathan was in the other room, watching the interrogation. Audrey closed her eyes and leaned up against the door as it closed behind her, her left shoulder brushed against his left arm.  Facing in opposite directions, but shoulder to shoulder. That should have meant more than it did.  “I’m sorry,” she told him.  “I don’t do mothers.”  They were one species of human she had little experience with.  Her fault, and she knew it.  “She insists she left all the windows down.  Unlocked, for what that matters, but that she left all the windows down.” And that she had two more pre-teen children at home that Child Services were in the process of picking up now.  Sending them off to foster care.

That was something that Audrey Parker knew something about.

Was a bad mother better than no mother at all?  Even now she couldn’t answer that.

“She also hasn’t slept for three nights – or days – so who knows how reliable that is.”  A trip to the store while it was still morning cool, relatively cool, to get milk for the baby, to try to get the baby to sleep by driving around even at the price of gas the way it was… and her whole life was blown apart by a stupid sleep-deprived error.  And no one to help her look after three kids on minimum wage.

Looking at Nathan, looking at her, and Audrey nearly lost it herself.  The heat was still there, but it was a living thing, and would never burn her.  Winter sun and summer rain, life-sustaining.

“Nathan,” she whispered.  Why was he here, and why was he here so close to her, when he’d withdrawn so far before?

“I believe her.”

Audrey tried to sort that thought process, but it just did not compute.  All her brain wanted was to drink in his scent, to rub herself like a cat all over him.  She had said no for some very good reasons. All of which seemed entirely ludicrous right now.  If he renewed his offer, she didn’t know what she would say.

“I miss you,” she said. That sent a shockwave through him that she could see. Encouraging.

He offered her a police file, not a renewed declaration of his love.  Crossed his arms and waited for her to read it.  She remembered when she would have appreciated that more, when she’d spent all her time working and none of it worrying about the men in her life.  Honestly, she didn’t know if she wasn’t better off then.

Bloody double negative or not.

Simon Crocker’s police file.  “So?”  She’d gone over it a couple times before.  The old Chief had been after Simon for a while, and the list of complaints was as lengthy as it was unimportant.  Nothing to convict for any length of time – which may have in the end cost him his life.  If indeed Lucy – she – had resorted to… She closed the file.  She couldn’t think about this right now.

“Look at the picture.”

A mug shot was a mug shot… was a mug shot of the man in the only other interview room that the Haven PD had. They were virtually identical.

“He’s like me?”  Shock was a cold shower.  Could it be?  Simon Crocker reincarnated?

Nathan took the file back from her. “Or he’s Duke’s illegitimate half-brother, and the Crocker genes ran true this time.”

Which was more likely, Audrey admitted.  Nathan had recognized him right away, she realized.  Simon Crocker’s ghost.  Now his son, come from away, back to Haven.  “Did you ask him?”  Does Duke know?

“Not yet.  If he doesn’t know, I’d rather he never find out.”

So they were back to keeping secrets.  Nothing like it to keep a couple together, Audrey mused.  That would be why Nathan was here, talking to her.  Mr. Dirk Harrison needed managing.  Duke needed managing, so Nathan needed her.

“What do you mean you believe her?”  If anything, Audrey had expected Nathan to lead the lynch mob against the mother. Anyone who would harm a child, accidentally or not… “You think _he_ had something to do with it?”  Oh god.

That was a deep dark hole Nathan’s suspicions had wandered them in to. She stared at him, following his thoughts along behind. A baby, alone in a car while the mother ran inside for an emergency grocery run – a reckless act, surely, but not murderous. But to… roll the windows up, lock the doors, wait for the heat to build… Deliberately. Then call 911 and…

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I know.”  Nathan looked at his shoes, not at her.  She couldn’t read him.

The hero profile was out there.  People who endangered others only to rescue them and bask in the attention and approval of being the hero.  Firemen/arsonists.  Police/rapists.

“What about Duke?” she asked.  “We have to tell him.”  He would never trust them again if they didn’t.

Nathan nodded, reluctant, but knowing it was the truth.  “Just about his brother.  Not… what we don’t know for sure.”  Audrey agreed.  Suspicion was not conviction.

“What about her?”  The distraught mother.  She was not free of blame, but she probably did not deserve to lose her whole family. And they her.

Nathan pulled at his own ear.  A bad leftover habit, and she automatically put her hand there to stop him, just to let him know he was hurting himself, forgetting for a moment that they were still fighting each other about something or other... that touching was out of bounds.  He stilled, and his eyes closed.  “Let her go,” he said, and turned his head until his cheek rested in her hand.

 

“You don’t have to stay.”

Nathan flopped his head over to look at her.  After eleven, closer to midnight, they had pulled a couple blankets off the bed and come out on the deck – Audrey’s deck – to sleep.  To lay down on top of, not under, since the air was still as hot and humid as a sauna.  Coastal Maine and almost no one had air conditioning, so escape to the sea was the only way to beat the heat.  It was marginally cooler here than at his place.  Barely. 

Most of the rest of the town seemed to have the same idea – or at least the coming to the sea to cool off, since most of them seemed to be having a good time down below in the Gull. Few of them seemed interested in actually sleeping.

Audrey lay on her stomach, her crossed arms as her pillow, and the narrow ski slopes of her back and buttocks laid out for his pleasure. 

Both of them buck naked.  Not a stitch, despite the crowd downstairs.  It was just too hot.  He didn’t feel it, but it was almost as if he could taste it.  He could smell the ozone of a thunderstorm that never arrived.  Audrey, though she kept at least a finger or a toe touching him at all times, did not want to have anything to do with cuddling or even foreplay.

Arriving at the Gull earlier, together, only to discover that Dirk Harrison had beat them to it.  He was seated at the bar, Duke crowded up against the back wall as if hoping it would protect him.  Smile, smile, and Duke’s expression of _What the Fuck!_ had met Nathan all the way across the room.  It was crazy how much Dirk looked like Simon.  Haven crazy.  It stunk of Trouble, but Duke was the one with the Crocker curse, in full measure.  This could be something new… or it could be one of those things that actually happened to ordinary people, ordinary fathers and sons who just happened to look like one another; weird but not supernatural.

No one would have even really noticed except for the ghosts thing anyway – and that was a separate Trouble entirely.

But Nathan and Audrey could not offer Duke any help.  Directly.  They’d stayed for dinner – ‘Good to have you back, Chief.  Officer Agent Parker.’ – and Duke hadn’t sent out any distress signals.

And they couldn’t really interrupt with their – his – suspicions about what had happened this morning.  Nathan had spent a lot of his life determined to hate anything Crocker; a combination of his own experience with Duke in school, and the less than subtle influence of his father against Simon Crocker.  He knew he’d been wrong about Duke – or at least the adult Duke, returned from his world travels.  Smuggler, yes, bad guy, no.

This one, this Dirk – and if Simon Crocker had any influence in naming his sons, he had been one sick sonofabitch – he was a bad guy.  Nathan was 100% certain of that.  This was the kind of Crocker his father had warned him about. 

He’d interviewed a lot of suspects, and witnesses, over the years.  Sitting in that interrogation room with Dirk Harrison – the other man had made all the right gestures, all the right innocent expressions.  ‘Wow, this was so strange and different from his ordinary life, and no, he was no hero, he could never think of himself that way.  Anyone would have done the same.’  Never once did he ask about the baby’s condition, or express any concern. 

A chill had settled over Nathan, a chill generated from inside – a psychological chill – as he realized that Dirk Crocker/Harrison _felt_ even less than he did.  He may have had all his senses, but he was a psychopath. There was no real emotion in him at all. All those expression and gestures – entirely learned responses.  It was obvious, once he knew what he was looking at, everything he said or did was no deeper than surface tension.  Dirk watched his interviewer even more closely than Nathan watched him, automatically, needing that information in order to respond appropriately in the situation.

That Dirk had met up with Duke so quickly only cemented Nathan’s opinion that he was trouble.  Possibly Troubled, but guaranteed trouble of the criminal kind.  Of the violent and dangerous kind.  Simon’s ghost had spoken about how ‘she can’t stop my son’, and it occurred to him now, as Nathan watched the light from inside play on Audrey’s curves, as he ran his index finger lightly over the shadows and highlights, that he may not have been referring to Duke.

Audrey murmured and moved away as he leaned in to kiss her shoulder.

This heat was a Trouble.  Nathan trusted her instincts that way.  And he _had_ been trying especially hard to be an ass.  An outright jerk.

After dinner, he’d let himself be dragged upstairs, let himself watch as she shed her clothes in a couple seconds, the relief of it on her face almost made him glad he couldn’t feel what everyone else was complaining about.  Almost.  Hard and fast in the shower, cooling her down, while Audrey had demanded his full attention and his full commitment to  the moment.

One touch, and he’d forgotten why they shouldn’t do this anymore.

But come on.  Didn’t he have the right to … pout, a little, when he’d thrown his heart at her feet and she’d laughed at him. Which she had. Even as the words had formed and fallen out of his mouth he knew they were a mistake.  He’d planned on the moving in question.  Not on the marriage question.  The marriage was what he wanted.  Moving in was just a little safer, less threatening.  Less permanent even, for someone like Audrey who…

“I’m not going anywhere.”

But even with those words he had a new idea, and rolled himself to his feet.  Went inside and brought out a bowl of ice cubes.

Audrey laughed and hid her face in her arms as he sat down again.

“What?”

“Nathan Wuornos, nudist extraordinaire.  Who would have thought.”

Nathan smiled, and dribbled drops from the cube he held in his hand down her back, making her gasp.  No one could see them, at least not without a very long lens.  And Audrey herself was pretty well familiar with his body now, from broken and crooked toes to various scars, moles and hair.  None of it seemed to disgust her, and at least some of it seemed to please  her immensely, so there was no point in hiding anything.

He followed the drops with his tongue, sometimes catching them, sometimes pushing them along, until they collected in the small of her back, where he eventually sucked up the whole works. 

Started over with the ice cube, running it directly across her skin, watching in fascination as her skin prickled and relaxed, as the cooling streaks shone and faded – blew across them to make it evaporate faster, and making her moan.

He pulled her hair away from her neck, ran the ice cube there, pointed, and flat, and right up into her hair. He preferred the blonde, honestly, but weeks in and she still kept the black.  Her choice, and he supposed it was deliberate. A reminder, possibly to them both, that none of this was permanent and there were other parties involved in their lives.  Audrey’s eyes with that black hair made her look even more fey than usual, and that too was probably a deliberate warning, if he had the sense to pay attention.

 _That_ , that look in her eyes as she turned over onto her back.  He could feel that kind of heat.

He played the ice cube over her breast, watched the droplets gather and roll down the steep slopes, watched her nipple harden and rise.  She whimpered a little, turned her face against his arm as he held himself up on one elbow, but let him do what he wanted to her without comment or hurry. Whimpered again as he licked it like an ice cream cone, arched into him as he sucked on it, soft serve, filling his whole mouth.

Her hand slid over his, stopping him, as his fingers found her wet folds.  “No.  You.  I want you.”

He didn’t say no to that, probably couldn’t – he had never, really, said no to her – and this was not the time or place to start.  Slid inside her like she had surrendered.  She was feverishly hot, he could feel that, physically.  It stopped him for a moment, but Audrey only clamped her legs around him harder.  Demanded more, and faster, and harder.

He kissed her mouth closed, when her cries started to rise above the noise from below them.  He was no exhibitionist, despite the circumstances.

He had been an ass.  They didn’t need to be married to do this.  They didn’t even need to move in together.  And to stop doing this because he didn’t, couldn’t, have everything that he wanted was idiotic.  There would be time for mourning her loss when she actually left, not now.  He’d been wrong to ask her for what she could not give, promises she could not make, and worse to blame her for the wound she would leave when she left, while she was still here.

He let himself go, come, as she gasped, and he felt her contract around him, felt her shudder beneath him.  Technically it was at the same time, but he knew they hadn’t been together in any of this, tonight, even as he kissed away the tears that leaked out of her gritted eyelids, their minds as locked away from each other as ever.

 

It was dark when she woke, in Nathan’s arms. Pitch dark, and even a little chilly.  The Gull was quiet, there was no traffic.  One lone bird sang out, that miserable herald that anticipated the summer dawn before anyone else, when anyone else would call it the middle of the night.

He stirred, because she had. Woke, and the moment was over.

Audrey turned on her back and looked up at the stars.  Clear skies still, and no relief from the from what the morning would bring.  Nathan started picking himself up – “Don’t go.”  She knew, saw it in his eyes, that she confused him.  Yes, well, she confused herself most of the time.  She’d walked away from him every night – wasn’t this what she wanted? The space between them, breathing room?

“Bathroom,” he said, kissed her nose and got up anyway.

But when she wandered back inside, wrapped in a blanket, he was already dressed.

She dropped the blanket and went to him.  His arms went around her, slowly, as she laid her head on his chest.  Said what she’d been trying to say all night and hadn’t been able to.  “I need you, Nathan.  I’m sorry I can’t –” He tried to cut her off, but she kept going. “I’ll stay as long as I possibly can.  I promise you that.  I will do _everything_ I can.  But I need you here now, with me, to do that.  And if, for some reason, it doesn’t work-”  Stopped again, because she still could barely manage the thought, let alone the words, “if it doesn’t work, and they take me again… you don’t have to stay.”

He didn’t get it right away.  Then he did.

“Be here, all the way here, now.  We won’t think about the future, and we won’t… anticipate.  Whatever happens, happens.  If you …” and she was crying again. Started over.  “Go get your truck fixed, please, Nathan.  It hurts to look at it.  But you don’t have to stay, after I’m gone.”

 

 

 


	5. Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.  
> -Victor Hugo

The old printing press racketed away in the back, a rhythm more familiar than his own heartbeat.  Vince didn’t hear Dave’s quiet step behind him as he stood inside the doorway, just taking it in.  Thursday’s edition.  They called it a deadline for a reason.

“What are you doing here?”

Vince jumped at his brother’s strained quiet question.  Not a welcoming one, but not demanding he leave immediately either.  “She’s back.”

“I know that.”

Vince shuttered his expression.  Of course Dave knew that.  “Audrey Parker is back.”

“I know that too.”

So… Vince couldn’t read him.  Not even after a lifetime spent in each other’s shadows.  “Was that you?”  Dave’s involvement in the Troubles was far deeper than he admitted even to Vince.  Vince knew, knew Dave knew he knew.  And in the cat’s cradle way these things went, it made no difference.  Dave admitted nothing, motive nor action, and Vince was left to guess nearly as much as the rest of Haven.

Dave took his seat at his desk.  Not answering was as much an admission as saying the words.  This was _not_ Dave’s doing.  “If Nathan finds you here…”

Vince lowered himself into his own chair.  Novel writing was vastly overrated as a retirement occupation and while he had never encountered writer’s block as a Trouble, he could definitely describe it as a curse.  That typewriter on his deck had never pounded out more than a sentence on a page, and those few pages had all ended up in the trash.  Dave was the writer.  Vince did the ads and the obituaries.  “Nathan knows.  He said…”

Vince couldn’t repeat some of what Nathan had confessed to him. Words about his father, and the Chief and his need to find some answer – words he had given to Vince only because they shared a unique connection and history. Sarah had never given him an answer when he’d asked her to marry him. She’d left the ring behind when she’d gone, and Richard Crocker’s body had washed up on the shore the next day. At the time Vince had no way to connect the two events and he’d spent twenty seven years believing he’d been jilted.

In some ways Nathan was lucky, Vince believed.  Or used to believe, that Nathan was ahead somehow.  That at least Nathan knew…

Now, after the other man had told him about Audrey’s return, Vince wondered if ignorance wasn’t bliss after all.  With Nathan’s quiet apology – Nathan had apologized to him! – for an unjustified and violent overreaction, and probably illegal abuse of police authority, he was welcome to come back to town.  It was probably pointless to complain to the state or county police boards but he could talk to the Selectmen about replacing him as chief – Nathan would not fight him on it.

“He said that he was trying…” Vince stopped and swallowed. “He was trying to be a better man. The better man.”  ‘To be the man Audrey thought he was’, was what Nathan had actually said.

Dave looked down at his hands. They both knew what that meant.  Nathan Wuornos was Max Hansen’s son, but he would never be his heir.  In Haven, where family was often destiny, that was something of a miracle.

Another connection they shared, the desire to live up to _her_ standards.  Only - Nathan had started as a good man, already.  A police officer, honest and worthy. Vince had started… somewhere less than that.  Sarah had seen him, shaped him, and ultimately left him better off than before she came.  Vince wondered, wist and rue, what might have been his fate if he’d started where Nathan was already.  Wondered, and allowed a seed of hope, at what might be Nathan’s fate.

“I’m not sure that’s enough.” Dave said.

“I’m trying to say – you did good.”  To be the better man.  Nathan’s example was hard to hold on to, confronted at the very first moment by his brother’s intransigence.  They argued all the time about what to do about the Troubles.  They always had, and it was the only thing they argued about. 

Vince was trying.  Dave wasn’t.

Dave shook his head.  “You still don’t understand.  Good and bad are not the point.”

Dave played chess with precision and planning, memorized strategies and considered every move at least seven moves ahead.  Vince played with brute force and open attack – it was war game, after all.  They didn’t play each other much anymore, but when they did, they usually ended up closely matched.  And usually, ended up frustrated with each other, their differing styles clashing so that – win or lose – there was no joy in the game.

That was what Vince felt now.  They were somehow talking past each other.  Blind men describing an elephant.  To him, good and bad were the only point. The ultimate outcome was beyond their grasp.  Or even conception.

 

Audrey was blonde again.

Duke couldn’t help the little huff and stumble as he saw her in the doorway of the Gull, surveying the crowd.  Dirk turned and looked where he looked, looked back.

“Really?  The cop?”  Dirk smirked a little, and Duke decided he liked that facial expression even less than the rhyme. 

Duke kept on polishing the same glass. He’d been getting to know his half-brother over the past few days, but there were large parts of Duke’s life that were still off-limits. Audrey and Dana a large part of that. And Audrey/Dana as a single person/being not only too complicated to explain, but too… close and too fragile.

He was not that close to his brother.  Yet. 

It was probably not fair to assume Dirk was just like their father, but it was reflex in Duke to keep what he valued close to his heart and off his face.  Letting his father know anything about what he cared about, like or dislike, had been handing him a weapon, leverage he used with practiced skill to make Duke do what he wanted.  Every gift had a price tag, and friends were mere tools to be manipulated. 

But Dirk’s skill at reading people was – Duke began to realize – something of a family trait.  Certainly Duke had used it in his cons over the years, easily reading motives and needs in others they thought hidden, exploiting what they wanted to get what he wanted.

It was weird, thinking of this stranger as family, but at the same time there were coincidences and similarities to their lives that just never happened with actual strangers.  You wouldn’t think a shared genetic code would usually translate into things like childhood adventures and misbehavior – but they had both languished in school, and taken it out on fellow classmates.  They had both lost their virginity inappropriately and at a very young age.  Dirk’s mother had never seen Simon after he went back to Haven – to marry and ‘settle down’ – but maintained that they were truly in love.  Simon had only left her to fulfill family obligations and marry as his father demanded.

Duke had laughed outright when Dirk confessed he expected to find the Crockers were big old money, when he’d finally decided to come looking for his father’s family.

Dirk had confessed his own unlawful past as Duke explained how Simon – their father – had left both Duke and his mother to fend for themselves most of the time.  Perhaps that was where most of the similar history came from; single mothers and wayward sons.  Dirk had joined a local street gang in Boston, robbed banks, dealt in stolen goods, and been a knee-breaker for a loan shark.  He had done some time – but only on a couple minor counts.

Thus the surprise at Duke’s reaction to a cop.  “A piece of advice, Dirk, brother to brother,” Duke said.  And even as he said it, he knew it was like using a match to find a gas leak.  You found the source pretty quick, but what then?  “Don’t mess with the cop.  You will regret it.”

Duke was a Crocker, too, and people came with different levers.  Telling his brother not to mess with someone Duke had already – if accidentally – revealed as personally valuable to him… Bull, meet red flag.  Meet frigging jeweled waving red matador’s cape.

Dirk held up his hands in mock surrender.  “Isn’t she with…?” He pulled his hands apart, apparently describing Nathan; long, tall and thin. Then pulled his own mouth down, into a disapproving frown.  Definitely Nathan.  “Tell me you’ve hit that out from under him.”

“Leave it.”

Dirk crowed, and smacked him on the arm.  “Shut up.  You did?  Good for you.”  Dirk approved, apparently.  Messing with a cop’s girlfriend was something of a gold star.  Completely forgetting that said girlfriend was herself a cop.  “But then you went and fell for her…”  He looked at Duke as if finding a structural flaw in Duke’s makeup, rust in the welds, fatigue cracks in his metal.  He shook his head.  “Duke, Duke, Duke.”  Big brother was going to have to school little brother on the proper use and abuse of women, and women cops in particular.

Duke put a glass down in front of  his brother.  “How about that bottle of single malt?”  That five hundred dollar bottle that Duke had been saving for just the right occasion.

Dirk grinned and raised an eyebrow.  Change of subject, noted.  “Deal.”

 

Audrey was looking for something, someone, out of place.  Either too happy, or too sad.  Something that would give them away as the cause of the heat wave.  The crowd at the Gull was overflowing again, and it took her a while to make her surreptitious survey.  She collected greetings from several people, who complimented her on her new look.  Her old look.  Pulled back into a practical ponytail, more to get it off her neck in this heat than anything else, but she was aware of trying to minimize it at the same time.

It only made her feel self-conscious, more self-conscious, that people noticed her while she was trying to blend in with them.  She forced herself not to look straight at the bar, though she’d noted Duke’s position the moment she’d walked in.

Her bloody hair color should not be this big a deal.  Next week she was going red, just to see what kind of reaction that brought on.  It was just hair, her choice, and it did not carry any friggin’ deep meaning.

Except, of course, that it did.  It signified all kinds of meaning in a person who had almost no other permanent ties to an identity.  Dana was black-haired.  Audrey was blonde. 

“It’s Friday,” Duke said, offering her a glass.  “Are you off the clock yet, Officer Parker?”

She took the glass from him, and sighed.  She wanted to hug him, and apologize.  His eyes were a bit glassy when she did dare to look there, and Dirk Harrison was watching them from across the room.  She’d feared his reaction, and yet knew that this is exactly how he would react.  Easy.  Understanding. Letting her off the hook.

“I think I’ve painted a target on your back,” Duke said.  “Just a head’s up.”

She looked at him more closely, eyes narrowed.  Understanding – he read the meaning of the change in hair color like she came with printed instructions – but not easy.  He was not easy about anything right now,  “Why?”  Equally, she appreciated the way he let her see him, see his real reaction.  He could have just as easily shut her out entirely.

“Duke…”

“Dirk thinks we’re hot and heavy under Nathan’s nose.”

What??  She stood up, weight back on her heels.

“I had to keep him away from Dana.”

Duke!  Now she wanted to beat on him.  Like she needed another complicated lie to keep straight.  One day, when she had an hour or so by herself, she was going to write down all her bloody secrets.  Maybe mail it off to the Herald.  She trusted that he had a good reason, and she wasn’t going to betray him – but jesus.  She was going to have to tell Nathan about this new wrinkle.  “Oh, fuck it,” she said, and threw back the shot.

Choked on it.

Couldn’t breathe.

“Oh my ghod,” she exhaled.  “What _the hell_ is that?”

Duke held her up from collapsing to the floor, as she all but fell into his arms.

“Twenty-five year old Laphroaig single malt,” both amused and hurt, insulted and delighted at her reaction.  That he’d forced such a reaction from her.  And they were both aware of eyes – familial and otherwise – watching them, no doubt interpreting according to prejudice and inclination.

It tasted like bog water.  Like it was strained through the socks of soldiers forced to march through bog water for hours.

His arm on hers.  Her forehead on his shoulder, choking, but still… Duke.

His grip on her tightened as the moment changed, second by ticking second.  As the knowledge bounced back and forth between them like a tennis ball.  Her hair was different.  Her body was the same.  He was the same – nothing had changed for him.  “Duke,” she whispered, when she hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

He’d planted the idea, reminded her, perhaps.  There’d been a time, before, before she’d chosen.  Before events chose for her.  This was not even about Dana.  The whole restaurant was there to witness, and that was perhaps the only reason she didn’t kiss him, just to finally find out for sure what it would have been like.

Only now her mouth and nose were full of wilderness; peat and rain, smoky fires and heather.

She put a hand over her mouth.  Looked up at him with wide eyes.  “What the hell is _that_?”  Leather, good leather, and cherries.

“The finish,” he said.

Oranges?  Salt and sea.  Wind and tufted grass that bent and danced under it.  Audrey turned her face into his neck as images and emotions flooded her.  Smells and tastes that couldn’t possibly fit into one swallow of whisky.

“Hey,” Duke shushed at her, pushing hair away from her face, trying to see her.  “Hey.”  Smiled.  “I guess that was the right occasion after all.”

She didn’t ask him his meaning.  It didn’t matter.  It mattered that he’d apparently forgiven her for erasing another aspect of Dana, taking her farther away from him.

 

Nathan found them gathered around a table, hours later.  The restaurant was supposedly closed, but there were still a couple tables of people lingering.  This heat made the nights more comfortable for socializing, for everything, and Haven was slowly taking on the character of a warmer southern clime – where people hid away from the sun during the day and only came out at night.  And late at night at that.

Dirk Harrison was there too, with Duke and Audrey. Audrey greeted him with a slow promise of a smile, holding her hand in the air until he was forced to step forward to take it.  “Duke has been keeping secrets, Nathan,” she offered.  “Keeping the good stuff to himself.”

Duke cocked his head ironically.  “Nathan knows all about my shelves.  Don’t you, Chief?”  Duke leaned towards Audrey.  “He used to call them by the days of the week.  Vodka was Monday.  Tuesday was –”

“Duke.”

Duke had the sense to stop.  After a few seconds, the sense to look embarrassed.  “Sorry.”

Dirk Harrison saw all. Watched all.  Noted all.  It was the only reason Nathan didn’t put his fist through Duke’s nose.  He’d expected Duke to react to Audrey’s new look – something that she had not consulted him about.  He’d expected to have to pull him out of a fight or a misplaced drag race down Main street, or break up a loud party at the very least.  He had not expected him to involve Audrey in anything, let alone with Dirk attending.  He had not expected Duke to even want to talk to Audrey for weeks.

He did not care about the color of her hair.  He knew it was some sort of signal to him, possibly even a promise to herself.  Choosing to be Audrey all the way, right here right now, and not think about what the future would bring.  A promise between them, when they could not make promises, when every time they tried it all went wrong. 

Nathan sat. Still held Audrey’s hand. There was no way he was leaving her alone with Dirk Harrison. And Duke was obviously in no state to defend himself, let alone her.

“That sounds like quite a story,” Dirk prompted, his eyes avid over his glass.  Not that he didn’t realize he was treading on dangerous ground.  Because he did.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Audrey said.  Not quite asking.

Duke poured for him.  Hid the label.  Nathan already knew what it was.  His nose was as sensitive as ever, and it identified the south Islay single malt for him before he sat down.  Still, he savored the deep lungful he took in in full measure.  It wasn’t until the liquor was long past his tongue that he knew this was indeed something special.  Not a weekday kind of whisky or even the long nights of the weekends, shared between them.  “This was never on your shelf, Duke.”

Duke didn’t answer what they both knew was not a question. 

“Laphroaig, obviously.  Easily twenty years old, more like twenty five.”  Took another sip.  There was something there.  “Douglas Laing?”

Duke toasted him.  “That is amazing,” Dirk said, showing him the label.  Douglas Laing, distiller. 

It was easy enough.  Laing’s brews were always the smoothest of the Laphroaigs.  The most complex and smoothest at the same time.  It was even a bit on the nose for Duke to keep this one as a favorite amongst his personal stash.  Right now though, Nathan was more inclined to discuss edged weapons with the two brothers than the finer points of expensive alcohol.

He’d had all the experience he ever wished in that area.  He would never go back there.  It didn’t matter what it was flavored with, alcohol held no more attraction to him.  He would never know if he could have brought her back sooner, rescued her, saved her – if he just hadn’t given up.

Which he had.  Which he had admitted to himself now.  He’d failed her once.  He wouldn’t the next time.  He would stay.  And he would fight the fight his father had, as others had – even without her.  And somehow he  would remove that stain of  his failure from her mind.  The Bronco was fixed.  The rest would take time, but one day she would not worry about him anymore, because she would know – know – he was the bedrock she stood upon.

Audrey watched him with distant wistful eyes, hardly seeing him at all, her head resting against the wall behind her.  Their fingers still wove together.  “Time to take you home, Parker?”  It wasn’t like she had to drive anywhere, but this was still too dangerous for Nathan’s comfort.

She shook her head.  “I can see back in time.”

_What?_

Dirk snorted a little, laughing, revealing for the first time that he wasn’t fully sober either.  Though he likelywasn’t legal to drive, he wasn’t anywhere near Duke or Audrey.  And he would fully remember anything said here tonight.

“Definitely time to take you home.”

“Take it,” Duke offered, as Audrey objected when Nathan pulled her standing.  She didn’t need a second offer, tucking the bottle, still a third full, under one arm as Nathan threaded the other over his shoulder, taking her weight.

“I can walk, you know.”

“It’s this or I carry you.”

“Promises, promises.”

He swung her into his arms.  She could shave herself bald.  Change personality, change eye color and fall in love with his best friend.  It would not change him.  Disappear for twenty-seven years.  He would be here when she got back.

 

Dirk watched Duke as the tall cop carried the girl cop out in his arms.  Watched over the rim of his scotch, still making his eyes water from the strong alcohol and stronger scents of dirt and smoke.  It tasted like ditchwater to him, alcoholic ditchwater, though he’d done his best to imitate whatever it was the others found so interesting.

He watched as Duke deflated, the other two leaving having pulled his plug.  For the first couple days Dirk hadn’t even been sure which of the two – Nathan or Audrey – that his brother cared for more.  Dirk himself didn’t much care one way or the other.  One hole was as good as another for getting off, and men – especially the gays – could be the same kind of whiny clingy bitches women always were.  Duke reacted to both of them, whenever they came around, in much the same way.

This, though, this _love_ thing, this would take some thought.  It was real, Dirk couldn’t deny the evidence of his own eyes, even though he had never experienced anything like it himself.  This wasn’t even what people ordinarily labeled love.  That was more often lust.  Infatuation, sometimes mixed with lust.  Often possession, control, and need mixed with lust.  This was more like…  Dirk hesitated and wondered.

He easily saw the way the tall cop distrusted him.  Nathan hardly bothered to hide it.  The stunt with the baby had been a spur of the moment thing, just to see what would happen.  He was new in town and he’d thrown a stone into a still pond to see the ripples spread out, to see what would come back at him.  He’d been surprised a little at the way the cop had quickly suspected him, surprised again when he’d been let out of the police station without even a warning of a beating coming his way.  Not even a threat to keep moving out of town.  Cops often had quick radar to what Dirk was, what he was up to – Dirk didn’t deny it.  But the ones who could identify his type, the ones who had run up against his type before, usually knew that he could cause more damage more quickly than they could legally prevent, or redeem once committed.  Usually it was boots in a dark alley and flashlights to his face and ‘get the fuck out of my town.’

Maybe Duke had something to do with it. Some debt the cop owed his brother, thus the restraint shown to Dirk.

Brother.  That was a new thought as well, something that Dirk was trying to catalogue and identify where it belonged in his list of shifting loyalties.  Did he fit above or below his drug-using unemployed mother?  Closer than a ‘friend’, yes?  But he hardly knew Duke, and they were only half-brothers.  It was confusing.

Brothers shared though.  Dirk knew that much.  This brother of his had much to share, beyond the entertainment of tweaking around a couple of cops.  A successful restaurant, and an enormous boat.  His brother was well-off, shocking as it was to think of in a Crocker.  If not actually rich.

And now Dirk believed that he’d found the right tool to pry some of that wealth from his more fortunate brother.  Duke loved Audrey Parker.  With the ‘real’ kind of love.  Whatever that was.  That was a jackhammer/Jaws of Life kind of tool.  He would have to think of the best way to use that kind of power…

The little man with the glasses had been right; met in a Boston drunk tank, when Dirk had been down enough and ready to confess some of his larger crimes, in return for a bunk and three squares a day.  Family was everything.  It was past time for him to connect to his own.  What the fuck was his name again?  Dirk shook his head.  He’d forgotten, and this when he took pride in remembering names and faces.

God damn, that ditchwater was miserable stuff.  He threw back that last of his glass, hoping they could go back to beer, now that the bottle and the cops were gone.  But no, here was Duke back with another bottle.

“This is Ardbeg.  Famous for its smoky peaty finish,” Duke said, sliding into his seat with glacial permanency.  Not going to get up again until he melted away.

“Even more than the laff-whatever?” Duke nodded, and stared unblinking at the label. Smile big, rub hands in anticipation.  “Bring it on.”

 

Audrey tried to explain about looking back in time, but Nathan shut her down.  She was drunk and she wasn’t making any sense, and there would be time in the morning.

She _was_ drunk, Audrey mused, like she hadn’t been in a long time.  Since that spring break she remembered but had never been on.  This one was hers at least.  Nathan had made her drink three glasses of water – but she knew she was still going to pay for it in the morning.

There was something else she was supposed to tell Nathan, but she’d forgotten.  Maybe that would come back in the morning as well.

They said that smell was the sense most closely connected to memory in the brain.  Audrey believed that now.  She had no words for what the whisky had evoked, sights and sounds, faces, places, emotions and connections.  Meaning.  All of it jumbled and on top of each other.

She screwed her eyes closed, and tried to hang on to them, but she could feel it slipping away.  Her real self, her real memories. 

Not erased.  Not permanently.

In the morning, she would remember that at least.


	6. The Lost Weekend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.  
> \- Isak Dinesen

_Oh… crap_.

Strange bed, strange man, and – moaned as she turned over – too much to drink the night before.  Christ on a fucking stick.  She was too old for this.

Dawn streaked through the closed curtains as she pulled her arm out from under his head.  Paused to see if he would wake – he didn’t.

Not the first time she’d woken up after a night she didn’t remember.  Not the first time with a man she didn’t remember either.

She gathered clothes from the chair beside the bed and crept out of the room before putting them on again.

Maybe the first time she felt this awful about it, and not just from the alcohol struggling to crawl back up her throat. Bringing the rest of her insides with it.  She rubbed tears away.  It wasn’t just the part about going home with whoever she didn’t remember. She didn’t remember whatever party it was, or… anything about how she got here.

 _Deal, Dana_ , she told herself.  You’ve fucked up before, you’ve fucked up again.  Deal with it.

Phone was in her pants – not her pants, because, jesus – ugly.  Duke’s name was in her phone…

And her finger hesitated over the name, because… jesus, how did she get here and not with him?

She remembered a violent disturbed teenager who could throw things around with his mind, who crawled out of a video game in character… and then here.  Hunched over her phone in the hallway of a stranger’s house and no clue what happened in between.

No.  The date was wrong.  It was _weeks_ wrong. She closed the phone, reopened it.  The date stayed the same.  Suppressed a sob, opened it again. Still wrong.

The clothes came with a gun, gathered up together from the chair.  Loaded, hip holster…  So, that was something.  She felt marginally better armed. Clothed and armed.

Figure it out, Dana.  In the words of Douglas Adams:  Don’t Panic.

She’d hit her head in that fight with Shawn Wright.  He’d hit her with something and… concussion could lead to memory loss.  Even weeks of it.  It could lead to bizarre and out of character behavioral changes too.

She stopped by the door, caught by her reflection in the mirror there. Behavioral changes like dying her hair blonde.

Like sleeping with the Chief of Police, as he wandered out of the bedroom, fully naked.  She closed her eyes as he closed in behind her, brushed hair from the back of her neck, and kissed her gently where neck met shoulder.

“I thought we were past this,” he murmured.

“I don’t know what to tell you.”  _So true_.

“I’ll drive,” he said, padding back towards the bedroom.  To get dressed, presumably.  “I don’t think you’re sober yet.”

 

Not sober yet, as she stumbled down the edge of the road.  True, dat…  Not an excuse, but perhaps an explanation for the panicked flight.  Not willing to wait for him to dress and drive her, not able to stand still for another second, not fully in control of impulses she knew were self-destructive.

She hid behind a hedge when she heard the Bronco behind her.  Walked out again once it passed.  Panic was the only reason she could come up with for the bottle in her hand, grabbed off the kitchen table before she’d yanked open the door and ran.

 _It wasn’t like he’d hurt her_.

Crying now, wiped tears away and snot on her sleeves.  Utterly lost, on the street and no frame of reference even from within.  God, how?  How did she get here?

 _Wasn’t like he’d raped her_.

Fell to her knees, scraped there and the heels of her hands.

 _Like he’d fucked her without her knowledge or consent_.

Screamed at hands on her, on her back, jumped away from them – more of a screaming, kicking backwards crawl, reaching for the gun…

At a man, a stranger – a black man who held his hands up, kind concerned eyes – “Now, I don’t think we’re needing that,” with a gentle swing of an accent.  Let him take the pistol from her shaking hands.  And the bottle, which she was more reluctant to release.  He called out over her head, a woman’s name, knelt down beside her – but didn’t try to touch her again.

A woman came running – a white woman, American accent, and gathered Dana up.  Let her walk on her own feet but kept an arm around her shoulders, walked with her – walked her, directed her – into the house beside the church.

 

Coffee was a godsend and did more to restore her than even the kindnesses of The Reverend Sandra and Mr. Habib Okundaye.  She held the cup in both hands, head bowed over it.  Shaking under control finally, but she accepted another cookie from the woman.  Sandra Okundaye, pastor of the Good Shepherd Church.  Restored blood sugar levels, the better to think with.

Her phone buzzed again, ‘Nathan’ clearly on the call display.  Sandra turned it off, powered off, and handed it back to her.

“We can take you to the hospital, if you want.”

Dana noticed that they were not offering to call the police for her.  Haven was a small town, and maybe they’d seen the Bronco out prowling the neighborhood, maybe that was what their hushed conversation earlier had been about.

_“He’s one of them, you know.”_

_“Sandra, not now.”_

_“Who knows what he’s done to her?”_

_“She’s had a bad scare. That’s all. We don’t know anything more than that.”_

_“He could have made her see things, or do things… you don’t know what it’s like.”_

Dana shook her head.

Her head was clearer with the coffee, but none of this made any sense.  Okay, she’d panicked.  What had happened the night before, the weeks before, she was better off getting from Nathan and Duke directly, herself – whatever it was.  To face it herself.  Her memory was damaged, missing, but… she had to know.

Dana stood up.  “Thank you for your help.”  Put the coffee down.  One of ‘them’.  One of the Troubled. She hadn’t known that, but somehow she doubted that Nathan was actually a threat to her.  _Whatever_ had happened, it was probably the result of traumatic brain injury, hers.  That conditions had changed for her – apparently overnight – did not put the police chief in the wrong.

She could not imagine the sort of brain damage that would lead her to – drunken – bed romps with Nathan, but then again, she knew enough stories of war vets who … Dana took a deep breath and dried her tears. Her tears dried themselves, the tap turned off as her brain turned on. It was always dangerous to diagnose yourself, and she wasn’t a doctor, let alone a psychiatrist, but she was a war vet. She’d been in a fight. She’d watched Duke (Duke!) be grievously injured, and then magically recover.

Did she really see that or was that some fantastic delusion?

Time would tell, but obviously that, and the fight with Shawn Wright, had triggered some sort of… fugue state. Which led to the drunken night(s?) with Nathan. Post-traumatic stress. That explained a lot.

She could only hope that she could somehow make it up to Duke.  That he could forgive her.  She couldn’t imagine… but there were lots of things in Haven she couldn’t imagine.  Dana thanked the couple again on the doorstep on the way out – no need to worry, she was just sorry for disturbing them and she would never ever drink that much again, so sorry –

Until a column of black smoke, barely visible in the lightening sky, caught her attention.  And then theirs.  “What is that?” Reverend Sandra asked.

Down by the water.  “That’s the Gull.”  She knew.  There’s no way she could have known, her local geographic knowledge spotty at best, but she _knew_.  The Grey Gull, Duke’s place, and her home.  Burning.

She started running, then slid to a stop in the graveled driveway as the Okundaye’s van pulled up beside her.

Ran again, once they were stopped by traffic, passed the crowd gathering on the road to the restaurant, passed the police cars, officers who gladly pointed her in while holding others back, elbowed her way through those already inside the police lines-

To find Duke wrestling Nathan back from flinging himself at the fully engulfed building…

“Duke!!”

Fell to her knees again.  “Duke.  Nathan.” They stopped. Turned to look at her. 

Nathan got to her first, engulfed her in an embrace, smothering and pulling, desperate.  “God, I thought - you didn’t answer –”

Held her head in both hands, smoothed hair away from her face, and stilled. Wiped his hands over her eyes and looked again.

“Dana.”

Dana’s gaze found Duke, still picking himself up, watching them.  Reached for him, escaping Nathan,  “Duke, oh my god.  Are you all right?”

Watched as tears filled up his eyes like water in a pitcher, spill over.  He folded her against him, smelling of smoke and sweat, “I am now.”  Rocked her from side to side.  “I am now.”

 

They watched the restaurant burn all the way to the ground, the Haven Fire Department just about as well-equipped and competent as the Haven PD.  They at least had the excuse of being volunteer.  Duke held her in front of him, arms crossed just under her neck, across her shoulders like he was a cape she wore. He pushed off any attempt to sympathize or commiserate the loss of the building, his business, any memories there.  He had insurance, he said.  She was safe.  Nothing else mattered.  He’d even saved her bike, before she’d arrived, moving it far away from the flames.

She turned around within the circle of his arms, her forehead into his neck.  Did he know where she’d woken up this morning?  How could she break that to him?

She spotted Nathan, seated on one of the benches overlooking the water, looking like a punctured balloon.  Duke followed her gaze, then kissed her cheek and forehead.  “Stay here.”  Went to Nathan.

Dana had never been one for following orders – it had got her into all sorts of trouble in the Army.  Now… there was no way.

Their hushed conversation evaporated as she stepped near.  But she got no sense of a conspiracy, either including or excluding her.  “We have to talk,” Nathan said, directed at her, but somehow missing her eyes.  Not as if they shared a secret, though.  As if he could barely stand to look at her.

Duke had that look again, when she looked to him for a clue – everything was wrong, and he couldn’t be happier.  Not that he didn’t feel or understand.  He did, he just knew it wasn’t the tragedy everyone else saw.  His restaurant was a smoking ruin, the whole town saw that.  He only saw her.

“I was with him last night.”  If he was going to hate her, better to get it over with now.

“Actually, you were with me for most of it.  You only went home with him.”  Kissed her fingers even as he stood by Nathan’s shoulder.  “And though I hate to say it, we do have to talk.”

***

 

“State your name and occupation for the record, please.”

…

“For the record.  Please.”

“Audrey Parker.  Unemployed.”

“I’m sorry?   Unemployed?  I understood you were a member of the Haven Police Department.”

“Currently unemployed.”

“When did this change of status occur?”

“Recently.”

“Ms. Parker, please understand this investigation is required by insurance statute with a claim of this magnitude.  You are not – I’m not supposed to say this, but you are not under suspicion in any way.  It’s entirely routine.”

“I’ve used that line myself.”

… “In that case I will remind you that you are entitled to legal representation during questioning, but any delay or attempt –”

“Oh, come on.  You can do better than that.  You owe Duke two million dollars and it probably means your job if you don’t find a way out of paying him.”

“The insurance company I work for is liable for damages… This isn’t personal, Officer Parker. Ms. Parker.”

“It’s personal for Duke.”

“Can you tell me about the events the night before the fire that destroyed the Grey Gull Restaurant and Bar?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I had a lot to drink.  I don’t remember.”

“As a police officer, I think you are aware that failure to answer is often regarded as an indication of guilt.”

“Try again.  I’m not a cop, and I’m telling you the truth.  I don’t remember, and I did have an awful lot to drink that night.  I’m pretty sure everyone will confirm that.”

“You are in a personal relationship with Duke Crocker, is that correct?”

…

“Please answer the question, for the record.  It is required.  Again I remind you, you are entitled to-”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know if I’m in a personal relationship with Duke Crocker.”

… “Are you in a personal relationship with Chief of Police Nathan Wuornos?”

“Define personal relationship.”

“What would you say is your relationship to Chief of Police Nathan Wuornos?”

“We don’t speak.”

… “Ever?”

…

“And yet I have testimony to the effect that your relationship was … very close, if not inappropriate.”

“People talk shite all the time.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You may recall I said I was unemployed.”

… “I see.  … When did this change of status occur?”

“Recently.”

“I meant, in your relationship?”

“Recently.”

“The night of the fire?”

“Coincidentally, but yes.”

“When you became involved with Duke Crocker.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“When did you become involved with Duke Crocker?”

…

…  “Others have testified that you were… very upset, leaving the Chief’s house at a very early hour of that morning, hiding from him.  That you were traumatized, in fact.”

“The Reverend Sandra and Mr. Habib Okundaye.”

… “Do you dispute their testimony?”

“Did you know that Habib is a drunk who beats on Sandra whenever he’s drunk – which is often and deeply – and that he’s decided to go back to Nigeria rather than fight an immigration investigation?”

“Your answer is almost word for word what Chief of Police Nathan-”

“Wuornos can suck my dick.  I didn’t talk to him.”

“Are you referring to Mr. Habib Okundaye or to Chief of Police-”

“Habib.  Nathan.  Both.  I left the bottle there, I ran when I saw the smoke – I didn’t -”

… “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

… “Neither do I.”

“Do you dispute the testimony of your state of mind the morning of the fire?”

“No.  Just the cause of it.”

“I have not stated any cause.”

“No, I know.  And you’re not going to.  You’re going to let it sit and fester there and let all the implications and innuendo and bloody-minded gossip do all the talking for you.”

“Why were you hiding from the Chief, crying and injured, that morning?”

“I thought he had raped me.”

… “Rape?”

…

“Are you bringing charges against him in this matter?”

“No.  I though he had.  I changed my mind.”

…

“Why, what were you thinking it was about?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss…”

“That he had discovered Duke and myself having an affair, that he had confronted me about it… something like that?”

… “I am not at liberty to discuss an investigation –”

“You know what, it really doesn’t make any difference if he had.  Not to you. Because bottom line, Duke’s restaurant – with that heat wave it was the only place in this town to cool off.  It was booming.  It was making money hand over fist.  He had absolutely no reason to burn it down.”

“Mr. Crocker is not under suspicion.”

“Then why…  No.  You are out of  your mind.  Nathan had nothing to do with it.”

“He wasn’t jealous of you and Mr. Crocker?”

“No, he wasn’t. He – you don’t understand.  There was nothing to be jealous about.  And he… You only have to talk to him to know.  He’s the most honorable man you’ll ever meet.”

“And yet he was involved with you when you were his subordinate, abused his position of authority with another citizen in town, and you just testified that you were raped by him –”

“I did not say that.  I said that I thought he had.  I was mistaken.”

“Mistaken?”

“Drunk.  Confused.  I lost my memory.”

“So it could have happened – you just don’t remember it.”

“Don’t you dare.  Don’t you dare put words in my mouth.”

“Chief of Police Nathan Wuornos has testified that he spent the night with you, is that correct?”

“It is correct that he testified to such, or that he actually did?”

“The latter.”

“He did.”

“And yet you claim to have no memory of that night.”

“I woke up with him.  In his bed.”

“When did you come to the ‘mistaken’ interpretation that he had raped you?”

…

“Shall I repeat the question?”

…

“You testified that you ‘don’t speak’ to him anymore.  Can you tell me why?”

“I want a lawyer now.”

“Ms. Parker, I know he’s the Chief of Police.  But you don’t have to go on protecting him.  Or protecting yourself from him.  Not alone.  I can arrange for state or federal authorities to –”

“Are you deaf?  I want my lawyer.  Now.”

“That won’t be necessary.  I believe your testimony is sufficient as it is.”

***

 

They let her walk into the police station as if she belonged there.  As if she was Audrey Parker.  As if she was still Audrey Parker.  Because, hell, it wasn’t like you could tell just by looking.  At least, not more closely than the officers who ducked out of her way like meeting her gaze would turn them to stone or something.

Not that they knew – apparently – about the supernatural _thing_ she supposedly was.  Not supposedly.  Was.  They didn’t know, both Nathan and Duke had assured her.  Even of those who knew about Audrey Parker, even fewer of them knew about Dana Bellamy.

Dana Bellamy barely existed at all.

No, the uniformed officers of the Haven PD ducked out of the way of _Audrey Parker_ who was apparently on a tear against their  Chief, Nathan Wuornos.

Dana Bellamy was dead and gone and she… she was her part-time ghost in a body that…

She knocked, because all of a sudden she’d run out of steam and anger and outrage.  And they hadn’t left it on the best of terms the last time she’d spoken to Chief of Police Nathan Wuornos, when he’d tried his best to break it to her gently that she was not even real.

“Come.”

He stood, when she came in.  Prepared himself for an attack of one sort or another, she saw, even a physical one.  “Dana.”

“That’s me.”  She rubbed at her eyes, because that was a bad way to start.  And not how she meant to carry on.  “I’m sorry.  I –”  She sat in his chair facing his desk.

“Don’t apologize.  You have every right –”  He sat back down again too.  Wary as if facing a feral animal.

“I think I fucked things up with the insurance investigator.”

“You didn’t call the lawyer.”

She steepled hands in front of her face.  She'd gone along with calling herself Audrey only because explaining the truth - when she hardly believed it herself - was just too much.  He’d given her a guy to call, given it to Duke to give to her and she’d thrown it back at both of them.  Because she was mad at them, because her whole life was a lie and they had lied to her and… because she was petty and hurt and insane.  Because she thought she was faster and smarter than everyone else and could wind people around her little finger.

“They’re after you.”

He blinked at her.  Well, at least that was news.  Maybe he could use it, maybe not.

“It’s definitely going to be called arson – couldn’t get around to what evidence they have.”  But they’d figured that.  Nobody could come up with a reason for the restaurant fire otherwise.  The kitchen had been cold for hours despite the customers lingering in the front.  Well past legally mandated closing time.  Grease fires did not just flare up out of nothing.  That and the lack of paperwork on some of the gas fittings – not done by any licensed contractors and Duke’s insurance was going to be denied.

But that _they_ were after Nathan specifically as the culprit, that was news.

“They – He – ” because they didn’t know yet if this investigation was on the level or directed by some person or group that had another agenda, probably an anti-Troubled agenda, “He seems to think that you could have set the fire and then crawled back into bed with me, just to get revenge on Duke for…” she waved a vague hand in the air, “whatever.  An affair with Audrey.”

“There was no affair with Audrey.”

“Whatever.”

“There was no affair with Audrey.”  He looked at her directly, those blue on blue eyes solid and absolutely sure.  Telling her.  She looked away, didn’t really like that he could read her insecurity.  She didn’t doubt that Duke cared for her – but did that make it more or less likely that he would, could, fuck her as Audrey?  Fuck Audrey and call it even because she was her?

The way that the Chief certainly had.

Did not deny.

Good god, she was going to go insane with this.  It wasn’t clearly rape, but it wasn’t clearly consensual either.  She put her hands all the way over her face.  As if he wouldn’t see her that way.  Because she could hardly look at him, couldn’t even face herself.  “How did she do it?”

“Hmmm?”

“Audrey.  How did she deal with this?”

“She… had more time to adjust, to begin with.  And she knew – had known for a while – that there were others before her.”

So she’d just ignored Dana’s reality entirely.  Plunged in with a body – their body – as if she owned it.  No, it wasn’t Nathan she should be accusing of rape.  It was Audrey.

Which was ridiculous on the face of it.  “I think, except for how it turned out last time, getting very drunk right now sounds like a very good idea.”

“Audrey said – that night – that she could see back in time.”  _… So?_   “Do you know what she meant?”

“No.”  No she could not see back in time.  If that’s what he meant.  She saw disappointment and… loneliness… come and go across his face, shoved away firmly into professional detachment. 

“How are you Troubled?”

She knew it was an impolite question.  She’d seen the tattoo earlier, naked on his arm like the rest of him, finally realized. Reverend Sandra and her fear and suspicion.  The whole town split down the middle of Troubled and anti-Troubled.

He hesitated before answering – but he’d blown apart her world by telling her the truth.  She didn’t believe this was too much to ask.  “I have no sense of touch.  Nothing.”  She waited, because she could see the shoe hanging there in the air all by itself.  “Except you. Audrey or you.”

She didn’t know what made her do what she did next, only that she was nothing but nerve endings herself by this point, rational judgment out the window, operating on instinct only.  She got up out of her chair and came around to his, looped her legs over his until she straddled him, leaned in and kissed him, thoroughly, open mouth and after a moment, tongue too.

Broke it off when a strangled “Chief” came from behind her, and a swiftly closed door.

“I am so fired.”  Nathan rubbed at his eyebrows – a gesture she wondered at, if he couldn’t feel himself doing it.

“Did you feel that?” she asked.  This kiss, that is.

“Yes.”

“What did you feel?”

A beat.  “Nothing.”

“No, me neither.”  Just flesh pressing against flesh, no emotion, no rush, hardly a tingle.  Which was a bit odd, because Chief of Police Nathan Wuornos was not a bad looking guy.  Far better looking now than even when she’d known him before. Before Audrey’s return. His skeletal frame had filled out, filled in, but it was more in the relaxed lines of his muscles and maybe the lack of screaming agony in his psychic aura. “And if Audrey had just done that?”

A smile, unexpected, and it transformed him.  She could see something of what, perhaps, Audrey had seen in him.   “We wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it.”

She smoothed her hand over one side of his face, an experiment, and an honest gesture of affection.  Smoothed his roughened eyebrows for him.  His eyes shadowed, but came up again, full wattage.  “Come down to the boat,” she offered.  They had more to talk about.  “The best way out of this is probably to prove to everyone that we’re all still friends.  If it ever stops raining, we’ll have a barbeque.”

Lucky Audrey, indeed, Dana mused.  It would be something to see, indeed, to see those eyes turned on you with full strength and meaning.


	7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Omnia vincit amor

Duke picked his way through the sodden remains of the Grey Gull.  It was beginning to sink in that this part of his life was over.  A couple uniformed cops were pulling down the police tape, the official investigation officially over, and Duke was soon joined with other members of his staff – Concha openly wept, and sent up piercing cries every time she found some recognizable bit of cutlery or whatever.

Nathan stood on the sidelines, watching, arms crossed in a way that probably only Duke could read as deeply upset.

There was almost nothing left worth salvaging though.  The old wooden building, a converted boatshed and lightly built to begin with, had gone up like kindling, melting most of the kitchen equipment. Most of the tables, chairs, the bar, nearly everything else was made – had been – made of wood. 

“Bigger and better, eh, Duke?” Bill McShaw said, with a pound on his back.

“Are you offering?”  McShaw’s Custom Furniture was a growing concern, and growing ever more expensive.  Waiting list over six months long.  If he was going to rebuild…  but, jesus, it wasn’t like Bill owed him anything.

“Always a second chance, my friend.”

Duke shook the other man’s hand.  “Are you serious?  I just might take you up on that.”

“ _Might?_ ” Dirk inserted himself.

Duke introduced his brother to Bill, who had known Duke for just long enough to possibly recognize how eerie the resemblance was to Simon – but the surprised look was more probably about Duke – of all people – suddenly displaying his family ties.  Brotherly ties.

“Welcome to Haven,” Bill McShaw said politely.

“What’s this about ‘might’ rebuild?  Duke, come on.”  Less politely.

Duke pulled at his chin and thought about all the missed opportunities to kick his brother’s shins under the family dinner table.  That was what brothers did, didn’t they?  And although he could imagine (if the Crocker bastards had ever been gathered in one room as children, which they hadn’t) being on the receiving end more than the giving, Dirk had a long way to go before he earned the right to comment on Duke’s future plans, in front of one of the few men Duke counted as a real friend.

But Bill understood too quickly.  “Those fucking bastards…  They’re going to turn you down.” 

“Already did.”  The insurance was as officially denied as the arson was officially confirmed.  Which left his extravagant gift two years ago in ashes, and memory of Geoff washing into the sea with each new minute of rain.

“I’ll rebuild,” Duke promised him.  At that minute deciding that he wasn’t through with the restaurant business after all.  Though he didn’t know how, he would manage somehow.  “It will just take a little while.”

Bill understood that too, and clapped Duke’s shoulder, warrior style.  Duke returned it.  This was Haven; friends, brothers, lost in battle, but the fight went on.

Dirk did not know when to stop beating a dead horse, though. Particularly when he’d already won.  “This is such a crock of –” he started, following Duke as he continued with his probably pointless search.

“Dirk!”  Duke finally snapped.

“I know what they’re saying about me,” with an eye towards Nathan.  He tripped and nearly fell over a large blackened lump – kicked it and regretted it, hugging his toes with one hand.  The lump was solid metal.  Not  distracted from his original complaint though.  “They think I did it.  That I set the fire.  I didn’t.  You have to believe me, Duke.”

“I do.”  The lump was the remains of Audrey’s cast iron bathtub, cracked into pieces when it fell through the floor, and then melted until it was more Dali than tub.  Dana’s tub.  _Their_ tub?  Duke sighed.

Dirk put his hand on Duke’s shoulder, just where Bill had.  Duke raised an eyebrow at him, and he took it away.  “I just want to say –”

“Don’t, all right?” Duke stopped him.  “Don’t say anything.  I know you didn’t do it.”  A glint caught his eye, standing out like starlight in the black upon black of the charcoaled remains.  He bent down and picked it up, smearing water-soaked ash and soot along a silver chain and across the engraved back of a small locket.  Lucy Ripley’s locket.

There is no way it should have been there.  Fire hot enough to melt a cast iron tub should have vaporized a tiny piece of silver like this.  Possibly shielded from most of the heat inside a box,  inside a drawer or jewelry case somehow, but… he turned it over and ran his thumb over the blue diamond on the front.  Possibly shielded by some other power entirely.

His brother hadn’t burnt down Duke’s restaurant.  He was a Crocker, Simon’s son, and he would never risk so much without carefully ensuring his own profit first.  There was pointedly no profit in the Grey Gull now.

 

Nathan watched as Duke reached down and picked something up out of the ashes.  Watched as Dirk Harrison dogged Duke’s heels all along the way.  Trouble, one way or another.   The arson case was still open on his desk.  The insurance investigators had tried to get him removed from it – it removed from his supervision, that is – but the state police had just declined this morning from taking it over.

Thus the tape coming down.  And the search for mementos.  Duke came to stand near to him.  Sort of half in front of him, looking over his shoulder.  Definitely not looking directly at each other.  Nathan wanted the easy camaraderie that Bill had shown him, the ability to clap him on the shoulder in support, to smile and joke Duke out of a little of his loss, but somehow it was not there.  Bill and Duke were friends.  Just… friends.  And it was solid and real and time-tested.

But it wasn’t this tortured push-pull connection that he and Duke had.

Duke offered him his open hand – and the woman’s necklace in it.  “Add this to your wall,” he said.  The wall of Troubles he’d started while looking for Audrey, that Audrey had only a couple days ago torn down and restarted – putting Sarah’s and the Chief’s rings up first.  “I don’t think she wants to know about Lucy Ripley right now.”

_She_.  Not Dana.  _She_.

Nathan took the locket.  Antique-looking, ornate face.  A blue diamond. Undamaged from the fire.  He was aware of Duke’s surprise as he opened it to look inside – nothing there – but this wasn’t a personal item, especially for Dana.  This was another clue.  Something that he could _use_.  He didn’t know how yet, but he was by nature and training suspicious of coincidence.  This locket… Haven’s troubles were settled in its people, not in artifacts, not in magical spells or rituals… but he did not like coincidence.

“I’m sorry,” Nathan said, again not looking at his friend.  Somehow ‘she’ was a pull between them, bringing them together, when anyone would normally think it would – she would – push them apart. At some point it was going to sink in for Duke what he’d lost.  Not yet apparently. Dana was staying on Duke’s boat, but Nathan could not muster any sort of jealousy or even rivalry.

“Don’t be,” Duke shuffled.  And smiled to himself.

Okay, maybe a little jealousy. 

“And don’t look like that,” Duke said, sighing.  “She’s still mad at me.  Us.”

“Really, Duke, I don’t want to know.”  Thinking about Duke and Dana not-together was almost as unsettling as thinking about them together.  He would just rather not think – “Really?”

“Fuck you,” Duke drawled dryly.

But Dana was not Audrey, and Audrey was as… not present… as Dana had _not-_ been while Audrey was there. 

Nathan was beginning to sympathize with Dana’s complaints of insanity and confusion.  “You’ll figure it out,” he told his friend.

Duke turned to face his brother, bringing him shoulder to shoulder with Nathan – coincidentally – as Dirk approached, bright and avid questions on his face.  “What did you find?”

Nathan watched the calculation in the other man, a constant and unending examination and evaluation about what was going on – an algorithm that ran a very close approximation of what a man should do, think or react in this situation.  Dirk needed to know what Duke had dug out of the ashes, couldn’t let go of not knowing what Duke valued above everything else, picked out first out of everything else.  But then, he turned it over to Nathan – and the algorithm had gone wildly awry.  He had no programming for this situation.

Probably, Dirk simply did not get that he was being rude.  That it was none of his business.

Nathan showed him the locket.  “Audrey’s necklace.”

Dirk held out his hand.  “I’ll give it to her.”  Dana was staying on Duke’s boat, Dirk was there too.  It was only logical.

Nathan smiled faintly.  It was like watching someone try to ride a square-wheeled bike.  Clunk, clunk, clunk.  “I’ll keep it for now.  It might be evidence.”

Dirk’s expression almost literally clouded, darkened.  Anger was one emotion that he actually felt and did not have to calculate to express.  He looked at Duke in accusation.  Duke, after a moment, looked away.  Shrugged.  A nod that supposedly suspended responsibility over to Nathan.  Chief of Police Wuornos.  Dirk glared once at Nathan and stalked off.

This is where they honestly differed, Nathan knew.   He could imagine Max Hansen had left behind a child or two with some other woman, even if he couldn’t begin to think that of the Chief.  Nathan, though, would have a very hard time calling such a person family, brother or sister.  And it wasn’t like Duke was so starved for relations either.  The Crocker branches spread out far and wide in Haven, cousins, aunts and uncles, even an aged grandmother.  But Duke insisted on calling this one his brother.

“He didn’t do this, you know.”

Nathan drew a deep breath.  Telling him, not asking.  Nathan would not have hesitated to push the investigation that way if he actually believed it, but it didn’t fit Dirk’s profile.  “If he had, he would have probably arranged to ‘save’ you and Audrey.”  Nor been still out cold the next morning and pointedly free of the smell of smoke or accelerants.

Duke turned a steady stare on him now, a little shocked as the implications of Nathan’s careless accusation tumbled into place.  “What? What are you saying?”  Not the hero who saved the baby?

He’d honestly forgotten this was a still a secret kept between him and Audrey, and excluding Duke.  “Forget it.”  He blamed it on lack of sleep.  His bed was lonely, and every little sound seemed to keep him awake. 

“Maybe you should look for some actual evidence and go do your fucking job, Wuornos, for once.  Find out who really burned down my restaurant.”

Dirk, on the other hand, was a push.  Dirk Harrison was definitely going to be a push on their friendship.

 

Dana was in his office when he got back.  On the visitor side of his desk, but twisting around papers and reports to look them over, and she didn’t look the slightest bit guilty for it as he came in.  She pushed things aside to rest her hip on one corner, twiddled with his flag.

Nathan sat, almost afraid to ask.  “What do you want?”

“I’m bored.”

He grabbed the flag out of her fingers.  “Go play outside.”

“It’s raining.”

And it had been raining ever since she’d dropped that bottle of whisky at Habib Okundaye’s place – a thunderhead had built early that day and broke with astonishing rapidity.  Thunder, lightning, wind and pelting rain making fighting the fire an even more impossible job.  Nathan had no evidence to back up his theory, except the coincidence of Habib going on the wagon and falling off again at exactly the same time as Haven’s heatwave.  That Habib was a mean drunk and wife-abuser; that was a crime that Nathan could use to separate a dangerous troubled man from his victim.

If Habib listened to his wife and gave up drinking – Haven was going to fry like an egg in a pan.  If Habib was allowed to drink as much as he liked, which was a great deal, Haven’s weather patterns would eventually return to normal – but Sandra Okundaye was going to end up dead by her husband’s hand.  If Habib was shipped back to Nigeria he could drink himself a bathtub of whisky every day and no one needed to die.

The Reverend Sandra Okundaye, of course, thought it was a vicious plot against her and her husband by the Troubled Chief of Police, deliberately persecuting the innocent non-Troubled and was shouting to all that would listen – the war was not over and ‘they’ were powerless against the supernatural tricks and devices the Troubled used to control all of Haven.  Unless they joined forces as the Troubled had, and fought back.

Nathan did not like coincidences for precisely this reason.  It resembled malevolent conspiracy far too often.

Or worse.  Forces beyond his ken, as his father had once said.  Beyond even the possibility of knowing.

How else to explain Dana stumbling from his house that morning, carrying the whiskey, directly into Habib Okundaye’s path?  If it had been Audrey he could have written it off as a guess, a seat of the pants impulse of the kind that had saved their hides more than once.  Intuition.

But Dana had been in full panic mode, disoriented and traumatized.

And if Dana’s actions weren’t the result of trained leaps of logic and law enforcement experience – did that mean that Audrey’s weren’t either?

“I know it’s raining.”

“If I’m supposed to pretend to be Audrey, shouldn’t I be doing, like, police stuff?”

Nathan sighed, and wondered if it still qualified as a headache if he couldn’t feel it.  The point of her pretending to be Audrey was just to get past the investigator – and that was over.  But then there was Dirk.  And Reverend Sandra, and all the other people in town who knew her as Audrey.  The choice was hers, but…

“No, you definitely should not be doing any ‘ _like,_ _police stuff’_.”  Though he knew it was intentional, it still made him smile.  “Or anything like police stuff.”  Dana wore Audrey’s hip holster, and gun.  Audrey herself would never have gone without it and it was necessary to the ruse.  Nathan knew that Dana herself, though not certified to carry, was competent with guns.  Her Army record was prove enough of that.  It still bothered him.  “Why don’t you go play with Duke or something?”

“Because Duke has that slimy little shadow of a half-brother attached at the hip now.”

“You don’t like him?”

“…either?” she said, eyebrows raised, evaluating Nathan.  “You don’t like him either?” as if filling in the word Nathan had left off his own question, rather than asking herself.

“Not little.”  Dirk was at least six foot four.  A good looking man, according to accounts.  And Audrey did not like him.  Either.  “Do you think he did it?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” she said, taking up with his name plate now.  “I wasn’t there.”  He took it away from her.  

“I’m asking your opinion.  You… as you,” what/whoever she was, Audrey/Dana/Lucy… “I want to know what you think.”  Even as he asked, he recognized his own ulterior motives.  How much of Dana was Dana, how much was Audrey, and how much was… ‘she’?

“I think,” she started, sliding off his desk and standing up, “he wants something from Duke.  I don’t see how burning down the restaurant gets him… whatever that is.”

Nathan agreed.  But it wasn’t a lot of help.  On either front.

“Sorry,” she shrugged.

 

Dana stayed in the car and watched as Nathan turned Habib over to ICE agents.  They put handcuffs on him, even though the man had made the journey from Haven with them bound only by his seatbelt.  In a police cruiser, not Nathan’s Bronco, so the back doors had been locked but … Habib had gone willingly. 

His only attempt to delay was when Sandra had to be restrained herself, outside of the residence beside the church, crying and begging him not to leave her.

Habib had asked for something to drink while they drove from Haven to Portland, and Nathan had stopped, bought him a bottle – let him drink it without comment.  Dana shifted her shoulder out from under his hand when Habib leaned forward, too friendly, and started in with how it was great to see them back together and how love was the greatest thing in the world.

“Hands off,” Nathan warned.

“Yes, Chief,” Habib said, sincerely, and fell back against his seat.

Habib smiled at her – genuine and friendly – the last sight she had of him as the ICE agents turned him around and marched him away into their custody.  Given the way he’d admitted to falsifying his citizenship application, his marriage to Sandra not quite legal despite their emotional commitment – it was unlikely that he’d be allowed back in the country ever again.  And Sandra herself was under threat in Nigeria for … feeding the poor, apparently, and being of the strong opinion that feeding the poor was actually something the oil-rich government should do.

Nice piece of work there, Dana, she told herself.  Good job.

Nathan gave her a glance as he sat behind the wheel once again.  “Thank you for coming.  He was better for you being here.”

Dana turned away from him, settled her face against the passenger side window.  It was three hours back to Haven.  She wouldn’t sleep, but she didn’t have to talk.

 

An hour later, Nathan pulled the cruiser into a roadside diner, claiming he was falling asleep for lack of coffee.  Dana had to pee more than she needed caffeine, gave in and followed him inside.  Nathan Wuornos was either the least emotionally sensitive male she’d ever met, or the most.  At this point she couldn’t tell.  Anyone else would have tried to get her to talk, or tried to talk himself, or at least turned on the radio to cover up all the deafening silence between them.  Not Nathan Wuornos.  Chief of Police Nathan Wuornos.

Who had an unexpected sweet tooth, ordering pie with his coffee and taking a booth instead of taking it to go.

The waitress greeted them warmly, ‘Officers,’ as she laid the tableware and quizzed them on where Haven was.  Never heard of it.  They were not in uniform, but she’d seen the car.   Dana was acutely aware of looks from other patrons as well, looks that followed and stared, then suddenly shifted away.  She shifted her blazer until it hid the gun on her hip.  Which was odd and heavy and uncomfortable to carry around all day.  Shoulder harness was so much easier.

Nathan seemed at ease, though.  Not exactly pretending she wasn’t there, but not giving her any opening for the venting she now desperately wanted.

They were a hundred miles beyond where Dana had gotten the last time she’d been out of Haven, as she watched the traffic humming past on the interstate.  No snow, no hurricanes, no floods or traffic disasters.  Was she free, now, or still in thrall to whatever forces had turned her back the last time?  Could she go out that door, hitch a ride, and just keep going, now?

She _felt_ her voices stir, surprised.  _Why?_

“If you want,” Nathan broke in, “when we get back, we can… you can drop the pretense.  Be yourself.”  He took a bit of pie onto his fork, pushed it around.  “It’s Haven.  People will understand.”

Dana looked at him.  Tipping towards the sensitive type, though she didn’t want to admit it, if he’d read her expression like that.

Or people wouldn’t understand.  And they wouldn’t, more like.  Some would, some wouldn’t.  Just another weirdness in a town full of weird, or another punishment from God for unknown sins, or a dangerous magic that struck down the good and the sinner alike, amoral as the weather.

“You’re sure it was him,” Dana asked.  Habib, that nice man.  Wife-abuser and weather god.

“Pretty sure,” Nathan answered.

“I hate cops,” she said.  Nathan’s eyes flickered down, but she saw that he understood her.  She did not like being on this side of things almost as much as she disliked being on the civilian side, victim of arbitrary rules and enforcement.  Mostly though, she did not like the confusion she felt sitting here with him, seeing both sides at once; responsible herself for tearing apart a couple who loved each other, but could never be together.

_Wasn’t she happy in Haven?_

No, she wasn’t happy.  No one was happy in Haven.

Duke… Duke confused her.  She wanted him, her body tuned like a guitar string, tight and humming, whenever he was near – but at some point thoughts about Audrey would interrupt and kill the mood.  Betrayal, insecurity, and how Duke had called her that name that first night.

There was a music to every engine, Dana knew.  A signature sound that was as individual as a human voice, footprint or fingerprint.  It wasn’t difficult to learn to tell them apart by model, and with experience and familiarity most people could recognize their own car even from others of the same model.  A prickle went down her spine as she heard the BMW  GTL1600 pull up outside the diner, heard the kickstand go down even over the hubbub of the restaurant.  Heard booted footsteps and the ding of the door opening.

“Excuse me,” Dana muttered, getting up.

That _bastard_ , Corey.  Who’d dumped her outside of the Grey Gull, like, months ago – back in Maine again.  She met him just inside the door, and it took him several seconds to put her face to a name, she saw.  “Dana.”

“Good for you.”  She grabbed his elbow and hauled him outside again.  “Where is my fucking phone?”  Clothes, too.

“It’s good to see you,” he said.  Patiently.  Meaningfully.

Stop.  Reboot.  He knew her.  Knew her from before Haven.  Knew her-

“Special Agent Howard,” Nathan greeted him, coming up behind her.

Knew _what_ she was.

“Officer Wuornos.  Sorry, Chief Wuornos.  Good to see you again, too.”

Dana backed up into Nathan, who stood there, backing her up.  Or, preventing her escape, depending on your point of view.  “You know him?”

“We’ve met.  He was Audrey’s supervisor last time,” he growled.

She didn’t like cops, she didn’t like pretending to be one, but she did like Nathan Wuornos – on occasion, especially when he shed that New England coolness.  Like now.

“What are you doing here?”  to Corey/Howard.  He knew Audrey, too.  It was more coherent at least than her competing impulses to slap him for not telling her the truth at the start, and begging him to take her with him when he left.

“I’m surprised to see you two here, together,” he said.  Dana felt Nathan stiffen behind her, as if this was some sort of accusation.  She did not understand.  “You continue to surprise.”  Definitely looking at Nathan, now.

“Me?”

Dana felt anger rise up from some deep place.  A moment ago Nathan had stood behind her, all bristled guard dog at her defense – suddenly he was alone and exposed, and under enemy fire, all without moving a step.  That she would not tolerate.  “What about him?” she demanded, making Corey look at her.  “Answer the question. What are you doing here?”

Nathan communicated that she should stop with a hand on her arm, holding her back.  Corey/Howard saw it all, smiled knowingly at them.  “Omnia vincit amor,” he said.  “Good luck.”

And faded like morning mist into nothingness.

“FUCK!”

Nathan wrapped her in his arms and pulled her close, into a hug and not letting go.

“You are fucking kidding me!”  She could feel him shaking with suppressed laughter at her reaction.  She was glad someone was amused here, because she certainly wasn’t.   “That goddamn bastard –”  What was the fucking point of showing up at all if he wasn’t going to stick around to answer some questions?

“Are you done?” Nathan asked, before he let her go.  Dana nodded.  Cops weren’t allowed to have emotional cursing breakdowns in public, apparently, and that was why – they weren’t supposed to hug each other probably, either.  Being a cop was a lot of rules, too, more than she’d ever thought.

“This isn’t Haven.”  That fucking bastard.  They were a hundred and fifty miles from Haven.

“No,” he agreed.  “It’s not.”

There was nowhere to run, was that what she was supposed to get from this?  But he hadn’t even been talking to her.  He’d been talking to Nathan.

 

A hundred miles later, she turned to look over at Nathan, still hardly a word spoken between them.  “We’re not in love, though.”  Picking up a conversation they hadn’t been having.  _Love conquers all._

“No, we’re not.”

“What about you?”

He looked at her curiously, not following.  “I’m not in love with you, either.”

“No, I meant – ‘You continue to surprise.’  What is that about?”

Nathan hesitated before answering.  She was nearly convinced he would either lie, or just refuse to answer.  When he did, his words had the pain and reluctance of truth.  “My father was not my father.  My _father_ was criminal and a murderer and… abusive.  Apparently.  I don’t remember any of it.  Or him.”

Sympathy moved in her like a wave, up over top of everything, but drained away to reveal what was important.  People in Haven lost their memory _a lot_.  She had, again and again.  Duke had, the Colorado Kid murder.  And so had Nathan.

“I wonder, sometimes,” Nathan continued, “how the Chief came to marry my mother, and adopt me.  And I wonder why.”

Not out of love?  Dana did not have the background to answer that for him.  But that wasn’t the question on his mind apparently.

“We keep going around and around with the Troubles.  You … disappear, and come back twenty-seven years later, as a different person.  Different people, same pattern.  Over and over again.”

“Except this time it was just two years.”

“Except this time is still the last time, and… ”

She saw something come and go across his face, a sadness worse than his own family troubles.  Her as herself, and not Audrey?  No, he’d just mentioned her.  Something else.  “Nathan, tell me.”

“Be careful.  The Crockers are at the heart of this somehow.”

She knew about the Crocker curse.  She’d seen Duke die and come back to life.  He’d even shown her a little of his other ‘powers’ that he’d taken from other people, mercy to good people cursed with something that he could manage when they couldn’t.  Told her about lives he’d taken, deliberately, when they weren’t good people, or something he could manage.  And now there were two of them, Dirk and Duke.

“What’s the surprise?”

Nathan gripped the steering wheel like it would talk, like he could wring its neck, twisting.  “I think…  Duke and I are not supposed to be friends.  Someone trying the break the pattern, maybe, separating Max Hansen’s son from Simon Crocker’s.  When I was growing up, between my job, and his – career – between my new father and his, and now even – you, and Audrey.  There’s no reason we should be.  Only, I don’t know which side wants what.  How am I supposed to choose…?”

He stopped.

Dana let him.  It was certainly the longest speech she’d ever heard from him.  The thing about car ride conversations like this was that there was nowhere to run to when you felt too exposed.  But you could talk without interruption, too, without being overheard, and even without having to look the other person in the eye.  They still had another twenty miles.

Ten.

Five.

Two.

Nathan pulled the car over at the top of the hill, at the lookout.  He closed his eyes.

Omnia vincit amor.  She put a hand over his, felt him jump, but didn’t remove it.  “Friendship isn’t wrong.  He said, ‘good luck’, too.  Whatever it is you’re doing –” that he couldn’t tell her, but that he had such a hard time carrying alone, “I don’t think it’s the wrong thing.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Of course I am.  I’m me.”

 

 


	8. The Abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hope you know what you are doing...

“Just apologize.”

“Sorry?”  Actually, that wasn’t an apology, it was a question.  She stirred herself out a boredom coma to look at her partner.  Fifth day of traffic duty, parked in the same spot for five days in a row and _no one_ was going over the thirty mile an hour limit.  The first day had been fairly busy, tourists and locals alike.  The second day less so, and whoever got caught a second time was too stupid to drive anyway.  Third day, the occasional unwary tourist ended up with a ticket and a fine that only guaranteed they would never make a return visit to town.  Today – nada.  Zilch.  Absolutely fucking zero.

The only thing worse than handing out speeding tickets, was _not_ handing out speeding tickets, and being cooped up in a car for hours – days – and doing absolutely fucking zero. There were, actually, only so many games of Angry Birds you could play.

“Just apologize to the Chief.  Please.  Whatever it was that got you put on his shit list – _I_ don’t deserve it.”

Poor Bill.  He did not deserve it.  Dana laughed and shook her head.  She’d shared the traffic duty with the other officers as well, using her supposedly superior position to get them to do the actual work, then mimicking their actions well enough after a couple days to pass herself off as knowing what the fuck she was doing.  Of all the weird in Haven, Dana Bellamy handing out _speeding tickets_ was up there on the weird-o-meter.

But Bill was another nice guy, chatting easily about his wife and his two kids, a nice normal guy with a nice normal life – and a habit of keeping his nose out of what didn’t concern him.  That list of ‘not his business’ was added to nearly every day and Dana had the feeling that he worked very hard at not seeing what went on around him.  A difficult mental dissonance for a cop. So when he came out and said something – even ‘just apologize’ – it was really bugging him.

He was not asking why or how or what – not his business.  But because the Chief was supposedly punishing her with this nonsensical traffic duty, it was affecting him.

“It’s complicated.” Dana said.  Too fucking true.

“Audrey –” and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Not Audrey.  “He’ll forgive you.  He –” Cut himself off, not going to get drawn into their personal relationship even though he was obviously fully informed on the subject.  “Just, please.  I’m begging you.”

“Do you know what that tattoo he has means?”

She watched the calculation in Bill’s eyes, a reflex like a horse shying away from a sudden movement, that fast – Trouble.  Watched the sudden blankness of his expression as all that he had seen and heard about, things he could not control or explain, people dead – all of it flashed on his face and was immediately wiped clean. Then, unexpectedly, he focused on her.

“He’s the Chief.  And he’s a good man whatever…” Twist, turn, twist – and the Rubik’s cube puzzle pieces fell into place for him.  “You left right after that,” slowly, realizing.

“Bill...”

“No, Detective Parker, I’m sorry if this is out of line, but – you need to hear this.  You had no right to do that to him.  To leave him like that.  People with a Trouble are just people and of all people… ” He trailed off, looked away. Rubbed at his bare upper lip. 

“Of all people what?” she prompted.

“You were the one who helped them.  You’ve changed.”

Dana opened her mouth to object to this condemnation, then closed it.  She could hardly deny that she wasn’t Saint Audrey.  She wasn’t.  She tried.  She’d helped a few people here and there. But there always seemed to be so much more to do, and all her _helping_ was just a Band-Aid on a cancerous tumor, eating away at the town from within.

“You nearly killed him, you know that, don’t you?” Bill said, a spiked look at her, really solidly angry.  “I take it back.  I love my wife.  I do.  But I would not forgive her and welcome her back with open arms after walking away, especially if she blamed me for something that wasn’t my fault.  The Chief might be one of _them_.  But he’s one of us too.  A cop.  And he deserves better –”

“Than me.”

Bill didn’t deny it.

Dana rested her head against the side window. Mission fucking accomplished.

A red Mustang license 3937 something something blew by them at must have been 60 mph.  Neither of them twitched to follow it.  And – remotely – Dana realized she’d picked up the habit of noting car license plates automatically.  She could even give a description of the driver.  She’d been doing this job too long.

 

Dana stretched out her neck and back in Nathan’s chair, hands wrapped around her neck and elbows pointed at the ceiling.

“Get out of there,” the man himself muttered, coming back into his office.   She signaled him with raised eyebrows, and he closed the door, slammed it.  “Get out of my chair.” Loud enough to be heard through it.

She brushed by him, getting up, an accidental touch that made him gasp. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be.”

She wasn’t actually sure she’d heard him correctly.  He had his nose in a file, not looking at her as he sat.  Just don’t, Dana, she told herself.  Don’t go there.  That dizzy swinging inside her was not for Nathan.  Or at least not her for Nathan.  Maybe it was Audrey, adding her voice to all the others, the ones who approved of the dizzy swinging tingling of awareness of a man who loved – not her, truly – but who loved a woman with all his being.

There was something irresistible in that.

Even the other cops had noticed, perhaps during, perhaps when he fell apart afterward, but they had noticed how their Chief had loved Audrey Parker.  And how he had taken her back even after two years away.

The real story was more dangerous and less Harlequin romance, of course, but not the part about how Nathan had loved, still loved, Audrey Parker.  Dana had never caught him looking at her like that.  He didn’t actually look at her directly very often at all.  Which…

“I’m sorry.”

He did look up this time, at her meaningful tone, a different tone;  a half second like a blue strobe and then down again.  “About what?”

“Audrey.”

Close file.  Paying attention.  Not looking at her, concentrating on his fingers.  “What about Audrey?”

A week spent with various members of the Haven PD and none of them would buy into the story they’d prepared about a fight between her and Nathan, about how they’d fallen out of love and that she – Audrey – was interested in Duke Crocker now.  Even that she believed the story about how the Grey Gull had burned down, that Nathan had had something to do with it.  None of them had taken the bait.  A couple of the men had laughed outright, thinking she was making some bizarre kind of joke.

This plan of theirs was a lot more complicated than she’d thought.

She took his hand in hers, didn’t miss how he jumped, an all-over muscle contraction like an electric shock.  Didn’t let him pull away though.  She was sorry she couldn’t be two people at once.  She was sorry that even though she was supposed to help the Troubled, she couldn’t do anything but hurt him.  Her very existence took Audrey away from him.

“I think the men are all going to hate her when she comes back.”  And it wasn’t going to be that comfortable for herself either.

“What did you do?” A warning rumble in his voice like far off thunder.

“I may have… implied… that Audrey left willingly, because you were, are, Troubled.”

To her surprise he did not look offended, just thoughtful.  “That could work.”

He did not pull his hand away.  Dana could feel the urge within her; help him. Like lust, but not. He was Troubled.  She could help.  It was a straight line instinct that was like a light inside her.  Do this, make this right and get the dopamine dump in her brain like a rat in a maze. 

She twined her fingers with his.   Sensation was as necessary a bodily function as any other, to protect and reach out, to collect data for the brain to process.  Children often went through a phase where they had to touch everything in order to even see it.  Some never grew out of it. 

“Dana, stop.”

It was called a curse for a reason.

“I thought you said you didn’t feel anything.”  A different type of feeling, of course.  That kiss, the morning after the fire.  He looked this time, understanding her.

To her surprise, he was the one who bent down, brushed his lips across hers, and she was the one who gasped, a little, at the sensation.  Just that, nothing more.  But they both started guiltily when the door opened, and Duke let himself in.

“I can come back,” he said stonily.

Nathan crossed his arms, and Dana desperately searched for where she was supposed to be.  Right, she was Audrey – on the verge of breaking up with Nathan and going off with Duke.  They were supposed to be having a screaming obvious fight about something…

“No, you’re right on time.”  Nathan said.

Nathan _fucking_ Wuornos had _fucking_ ice water in his veins, is what.  His tone was even, and except for a little jittery finger twiddling, hidden from Duke, utterly calm.  Had he done that – kissed her – on purpose?  Knowing Duke would walk in on them?

Duke’s look to her was somehow about four feet short of where she actually stood.  “Shall we?”

“We shall.” Dana felt about four feet short of her actual height right about now.  She scooted around in front of Nathan, going to Duke.  Smiled up at him.  They were clear now; she could stay as Audrey in the public eye, but be with Duke.

 _This was a_ stupid _plan_.

Duke’s eyes were nearly black in this light, and a muscle twitched in his jaw as he looked down at her.

Every eye followed them as Duke led her out of the station, hand in hand.  “I expect you back at your desk Monday morning, Parker!” Nathan called angrily, from inside his office.

“Wouldn’t miss it!” she returned, equally angry.

Stan was the only one who met her eye on the way out, his gaze sliding across from Duke to her as if she’d broken his heart too, and not just Nathan’s.  Duke’s grip tightened to crushing and she didn’t stop.

She climbed into the passenger side of the Tramp and Duke slammed the door  behind her, probably more forcefully than strictly necessary.  He took his position behind the wheel, but didn’t start it right away.  “Say so now,” he said, a voice she didn’t recognize, clenched as a fist.

Her get out of jail free card.  Her laughing Monkey King was no longer laughing, but he would set her free if that was what she wanted, and he would likely take on the gods and the powers and the dominions all by himself just to distract himself. Her hand reached itself to brush at his hair, but he jerked away. 

“Just drive, Duke.  Jesus, please.”

 

“I think I remember dying.”

She definitely remembered the screaming, the burning, and the helplessness of being trapped in the overturned Humvee, watching as her squad mates bled out.  She didn’t remember the flight to the hospital in Germany – but that was due to the drugs, or combination of drugs and general unconsciousness, not any supernatural amnesia.  The weeks of recovery, growing knowledge of her permanent and extensive scarring… she remembered that.

“Shh,” Duke whispered, his lips trailing down her spine, and the conspicuously smooth skin of her back.  She did not tell him that she still did not like her back touched, it did nothing for her, all his stroking and petting, despite the fact that she no longer had any excuse to hide.  She no longer had the excuse.

She vaguely recalled an infection – her training allowing an intellectual understanding of what was happening to her even as her body succumbed to the fever.  MRSA, likely.  Maybe some stupid rare bug found only in that stupid remote country.  And then the hallucinations that she had also understood intellectually – during the bouts of lucidity in between – and dismissed.  People that only she could see and talk to despite the crowded conditions of the hospital.  A man without eyes who stared at her hungrily.  Questions about her family and friends.  No, there was no one.  No one would miss her when she was gone, as rootless and windblown as a dandelion seed.

Hallucination… or someone with the power – a Trouble – to disappear from memory, to steal memory.  To _copy_ memory, from a dying woman’s brain and transfer it.

To save memory, and personality and history… her consciousness, saved and restored.

And then, she remembered, peace.

It bothered her that she didn’t know for sure if this peace was her death, or from when she was … copied… and implanted in this body.  But living in this body was not peaceful.  Voices muttered at her all the time, nearly all the time.  Mostly she could ignore them, but it was never truly silent.

The peace she remembered was silent – as the grave – and utterly timeless.  It could have been a moment, or a lifetime.

Dana turned on her back, turned to face Duke.  He let her, watched her with an expression of patient curiosity, like she was some abstract painting he liked, but did not understand.  She traced the whitened scar on his chest that ran from shoulder to breastbone, newest, and overlaid all the others.  “What do you remember?”

Instead of answering, he removed her hand, and traced his tongue along the cords of her neck.

“Duke…”

“Say my name, say my name…”

She grabbed his  ear and hauled him up to face her.  Forced the grin from her lips.  She had this _thing_ for men who would sing to her, turned her into a wobbly mess every time – and she would not let it distract her.  “Duke.  Talk to me.”

It was the one thing they had in common, even over and above the crazy shitstorm that was life in Haven.  And the one thing they could probably only share with each other.  To die, and to come back.  Who else would understand?

Whoever had copied her – they had also saved her, when otherwise she would just be dead.  Gone.  Maybe at peace, maybe just… gone.

“What do you want me to say?  It was done and over so fast, I don’t really remember anything.  I don’t know if I even really…”

“Died?  You really really did.  I was there.”

He rolled away from her, started getting dressed.  “I don’t remember.”  He buttoned his jeans.  “I remember when I couldn’t find you –”

Dana pulled a sheet over herself and pulled her knees up to her chest.  “When was that?”

“You said you went out for a ride.”  The day she’d tried to leave.  The day she’d been firmly put back in her place.  “I remember that felt like I’d died.  I remember…” He trailed off.

Dana felt her stomach knot.  He was building into something, like a gale into a storm.  She’d wanted to share with him, get close to him – but now she realized that all she’d really wanted was to unload her troubles onto him.  She was back in his bed, they were almost two hundred miles offshore and  heading further out, she was working on integrating the reality of Audrey into her life – that her life was not just Dana Bellamy’s, but a double-sided, double-headed coin.  Or, as multi-faceted as a cut diamond, a new reflection from every angle.  Depending on how you looked at it.

“I remember I wanted to hurt you.”

The one thing all her selves had in common, though, was this instinct to help the Troubled.  And Duke was so, so troubled.  And not just from walking in on her and Nathan… and _what the fuck_ was Wuornos thinking with that? 

Dana didn’t think about it, she didn’t analyze it, she just did it.

She put her hands up over her head, surrender, slid her legs around his standing ones.  “Hurt me like that again.”

Duke leaned over her, grabbed her jaw, too tight.  One of his hands entrapped both of hers. “I’m not kidding around here, Dana.  I just watched you kiss Nathan.  You, not Audrey, and not in front of witnesses so don’t give me any story about – ” He let her jaw go long enough to unbutton his fly again, shove his pants down.  He was rock hard against her and pressed into her like it was a threat.  “Tell me to stop.”

That voice again, strangled and choking.

“I liked it.  I wanted to kiss him,” she teased, razored with truth.  Duke whined pain in her ear, pulled her hair that knotted in his fist.  “I want to know him, what he’s like,” she whispered.

He flipped her onto her front, lay with almost all his weight on her.  “Shut up.”

“He says –” and she gasped, as his cock pressed against her rear.  “Duke, wait  -” She wasn’t ready.  She wasn’t prepared.  She wasn’t even sure she wanted this.  She’d had anal sex before, but it really wasn’t her thing, and… “He says you aren’t supposed to be friends.”

Not friends, like kissing her in front of Duke.  _Wuornos – you fucking bastard_.

She cried out as he penetrated her, too big, and too dry.  He pushed her head into the pillow until she quieted.  She gasped harshly, fighting the blackness for oxygen when he let her up.  Said his name.  She was naked, he was almost fully dressed.  It hurt, and it was almost worse when he spat in his hand and spread that into her ass as lubricant, because then he sped up, thrusting faster and harder.  She whimpered, and heard him grunting with exertion, forcing himself to climax.

She freed one of her hands, searched wildly for grip.  Finally just pushed her hand against the wall above her head, locked her elbow, the better to push back against him.

“Dana…” hard, almost a whimper himself, biting at her ear when he saw she was not trying to escape.  He let her go, but only to hold himself up off her with one hand, the other snaking down to find  her clit.  Both hands against the wall now,  knickknacks pushed crashing to the floor, stretched out full length, she felt his fingers fill her and she came when he did, losing all restraint and coordination.

 _How do you like them apples, Audrey Parker?_ some wicked part of her – still conscious and observant – thought.  This was her body too, now, and it was her choice how to use it.  Her _right_.

He breathed her name, after, continuously, over and over again.  Breathing hard and, she realized, trying to cry.  Still trying to let out at least some of the agony inside him.  She stopped him when it changed to ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again instead of her name.  “I’m so sorry, Duke,” she told him, brushing his eyes, kissed them closed.  That stopped him, her apologizing to him.  It was never going to be white picket fences and missionary positions with them, was it?  They’d done missionary, of course, among others.  Enjoyed it, though maybe not as much as this.  “I’m so sorry if you weren’t ready for that.  I should have asked first.”

Suspicion clouded his expression, shoving aside the grief at least.  Then realization, and finally, yes, laughter.  “You --.  Yes, you should have.”  His head fell, relief, and his lips ended up on her collarbone.  Mission accomplished, as she felt his violence and anger drain away.  “I love you,” she felt, more than heard, as his lips formed the words against her skin.

_Oh._

Tears prickled.  Because she knew that there were no picket fences or two point five kids and a dog or anything like that in her future with Duke Crocker – not with anyone, but less than never with Duke Crocker – but she loved him more than her own life.

He’d told her about that desperate conversation between him and Nathan, and the conclusions to be drawn from it, at the same time he’d told her about Audrey.  They had, both Duke and Nathan together, sitting in Nathan’s Bronco with the rain coming down outside.  Conclusions they had drawn, that is, but that Dana herself resisted.  She was a copy of the real Dana Bellamy, she was supposed to help the Troubled and she was made for Duke.

She was made for him. 

Kneeling behind him when he couldn’t, wouldn’t, face her, she laid her head between his shoulder blades.

She was made for him.  But that little equation went both ways.  He was meant for her, too.

“I _died_ , Duke,” she said.  “I died without ever meeting you.  That –”  That was unthinkable to her, now.  It was never going to be picket fences and growing old together with them.  But she was grateful for her life, and for this moment.  For every stolen, borrowed moment of her life since she’d come to Haven, even if she had to share it with some other woman. “Whatever _they_ want from me, or us, we’ll figure it out.  But it can’t be that bad.  It can’t.  Because they gave you to me.” 

 

The open ocean in the middle of the night was an odd and disconcerting place.  Dirk watched the blinking dot of the Cape Rouge’s progress against the screen, the auto-pilot actually steering the boat while he was supposedly on watch.  So he watched. But beyond the lights on the bow and the back end… whatever that was called – the stern – there was only blackness.  A freighter of some sort had passed by an hour ago, lit up like a football stadium and nearly as big, but since then, nothing.

And he watched as Duke rolled up on the bridge, one slow step at a time.  Dirk smiled to himself.   Apparently the cop was a good fuck, after all.  Who knew?

Duke flicked off the interior lights of the bridge – over Dirk’s protest.  But then slowly Dirk noticed how the stars filled the sky from horizon to horizon.  A moonless night, and the sea was nearly flat, it was hard to tell where the sky stopped and the ocean began.

Dirk laughed at his brother, who hadn’t said a word since coming above.  “Figures a cop would like it rough, eh?”

Between one eye-blink and the next, Dirk found himself with his arm twisted behind his back and Duke’s elbow under his chin.  One twitch and Duke could permanently separate his skull from his spine and Dirk would never feel a thing.  “Hear this, Brother.  I’m only going to say it once.  Are you listening?”

Dirk nodded.  Tried to nod.  It amounted to little more than jogging pressure in the soft flesh under his jaw.  There was no restriction to his breathing, but he could not escape.  Just where and how Duke had learned that move, Dirk would have given a great deal to know.  He was listening.

“She is off-limits.  You don’t talk _about_ her, you don’t talk _to_ her.  Not while I’m not present.  Do you understand?”  Dirk did the almost nod again.  “Good.”

Duke turned him loose.  Dirk shook out his arm, and massaged his throat.  As a way of marking a woman as his it was a little extreme. “All you had to do was say –”

“You were supposed to stay on watch,” Duke said.

“I had to use the head.”  Dirk was actually proud of himself for using the terminology.  Descending the gangway he’d heard them going at it – and while he could care less if they banged each other’s brains out – for a minute or so it had sounded like a murder in progress.  Not that he’d stopped and listened at the door (hatch?) for any longer than that.

But Duke had already forgotten what he’d said, been mad about.  His expression was a thousand miles away, a little dazed.

That cop must have been a blazingly good fuck.

She’d kept Duke waiting for long enough, anyway.

He did not understand.  He’d watched Audrey with Duke that night, drinking and laughing – and he’d seen only … friendship.   Now, it was like there was a live wire between them, humming with high voltage, and he did not know what had changed.

For maybe the ‘count’em-on-one-hand’ times in his life, Dirk wondered what it felt like to feel… _that_ … and whether he wasn’t actually missing out on something after all.  Most of the time feelings seemed to be far more trouble than they were worth.  Feeling made you – other people – do such stupid things, self-destructive, anti-self-preservation things.  Everything from visiting relatives you didn’t like to taking the blame for crimes you didn’t commit.  To taking in a half-brother you didn’t know and treating him decently when the rest of the town seemed bent on blaming him for a crime he didn’t commit.

It seemed to Dirk, though, that Duke had something, possessed something, that Dirk couldn’t see or touch.  Something even that he hadn’t had when they’d pulled away from the dock in Haven.  Something he couldn’t label, did not recognize.  Something that – Dirk was beginning to realize – he would never have.

“What are we doing out here, anyway?”  Because thinking about himself and his – possible – faults was not something Dirk was ever comfortable with.

“That,” Duke said, with a nod at the horizon.

There was nothing on the horizon.

At first Dirk was afraid that it was something else he couldn’t see or touch, until he realized it was actually a whole lot of black nothing, blocking out the starlight, utterly motionless. Duke pulled back the throttles even as Dirk saw waves crash against it, still half a mile out, and light up with phosphorescence.

An iceberg.

A floating mountain of ice, and they were headed right for it.

 

She loved him.

Duke maneuvered the thrusters carefully, slowing the large boat until the Cape Rouge crept up on the iceberg at something less than dead slow.  These sleeping behemoths were well known for the ninety percent that they kept hidden beneath the surface, and the way they often had wide shelves and points sticking out well beyond the supposed outlines visible above.  Less well known was how they tended to unevenly melt, erode and split apart, irregular fault lines and cracks that could, and did, suddenly break apart and roll over with the frightening and unpredictable speed of a bathtub toy, and the mass of a landslide.

She loved him.

He put Dirk’s hands over the thrusters, trusting him with brief instructions on how to keep the Rouge parked up against the ice while he went down to the deck and picked up the rocket propelled grapplers, purchased – well, acquired – some years ago against future considerations and only now finding the use they’d been obviously needed for.  He shot blindly and pulled the line in until the bow was secure, as secure as possible in this impossibly insecure place – then did the same in the stern.  They were now moored to the iceberg.

It was something he could not seem to hang on to, as frictionless as ice on a skillet.  Dana _loved_ him.

As she was made for him, he was hers.

She was on the bridge when he went back up there, watching the procedures on deck, watching him, with one hand over her mouth in worry, arms clenched together.  He kissed her forehead.  She did not question him.  Dirk did, loudly, demanding and confused questions about what the fuck they were doing that Duke ignored entirely.  Down to the hold to bring up the auger mechanism.

Setting up the auger into the ice was the hardest part. There was a small flat plane of ice near the gunwale that was about as good as he was going to get, and he anchored the contraption – of his own design – there with a couple pounded stakes.  Dirk and Dana managed the wide hose into the stripped down bare holds, and with a flick of a switch, the power auger started digging chunks of ice out of the berg.  Tens of thousands of years old ice, lately attached to a Greenland glacier, and two weeks floating south to come into his life.  To be sold to big city drinkers by the five dollar ounce.

He only charged the iceman five dollars a pound.  But considering  that the Rouge could carry some two hundred thousand pounds without noticing – that would give him a real start on rebuilding his restaurant.

Dana grinned at him, hands on hips, as the ice rattled deafening into the steel holds.  Was this pride?  He’d impressed her, and that meant something more than the money.  Even Dirk’s look followed the ice into the hold and then, as if surprised, up to Duke.  It worked. Duke couldn’t name what he felt.  Success in the eyes of people who mattered to him, when he’d never considered – had deliberately shut out – what other people thought.  It mattered.

Dana wrapped her arms around his neck as he went to her.  Blonde hair tucked into a practical if ridiculous John Deere cap out here at sea, and Dana’s brown curious eyes examined him back.  Kissed her, both his hands on her jaw, stinging cold from the ice still, but she flowed up into him. 

There was life after death.

He did not care what Nathan and Audrey got up to when Dana was not present.  Surprisingly, he found he did not care what Nathan and Dana did or did not feel – or do – for each other when he was not present.  All he cared about was how he felt about her, and how she felt about him.  And she…

She loved him.

 

Just as Duke put the hatch back on, the holds full, men began flying out of the sea onto the deck.  Men, wearing wetsuits but nothing else, barefoot and without gear.  They attacked without a word.

Duke grabbed a long metal hook, and started swinging.  It took mere seconds before he was overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Dana came scrambling down the stairs, her moment of frozen shock gone.  So men flew out of the sea to land on Duke’s boat, attacked him. So she’d seen stranger… no, fuck it.  This took the prize for the fucking strangest thing ever.

Two of the men grabbed her from behind as she screamed.  “Duke!”  Another pair held Dirk to the deck.

That made the man confronting Duke turn and look at her.  And look at her again.  “You’re not her.”

Mid fifties, compact power, patrician features. Obviously the leader of this mutant group -  “No, I’m not, you fucking bastard.  Leave him alone.”  He laughed.  He bloody laughed, sending her into a useless fit of seething rage.  “Let him go!”

“Most people would be arguing for their own lives right about now.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No, you’re not, are you.”

“Get off this boat or you will regret it.”

He actually took a step back.  He looked over his shoulder at Duke, and then at her.  Confused.  “He’s a Crocker, you know that, don’t you? You – protecting him?  Do you know what he can do?  Do you know what he is?”

“And who the hell are you?”

“Dana, Cole Glendower.  And family.  Cole,  meet Dana Bellamy.” Duke said bitterly.  Three held him, all of them armed.

“Who is this?” Glendower demanded, when Dirk stirred.  Two men stood on him, a foot on his head and one on his shoulder.

“No one,” Dana muttered.  “Crew for the day.  He’s innocent.”

Shock was fading.  Anger was fading.  She wanted to be angry.  Dana wanted to fight, wanted to lash out and scream and fling herself at the _freaks_ who threatened Duke…, but something, someone else, had risen from inside her.  Her voices, her past lives.  Her true self, and it knew better than to add Dana’s rage.

“We heard you were gone.” Glendower said, closing on her.

“You heard right.  _Now I’m back_.”

That actually seemed to mean something to him.  Calculation in his eyes.  “ _Do_ you know about the Crockers?”

“I know about this one.  He’s mine.  Let him go.” 

“He hunts the Troubled.”

“So do I, if necessary.  And you’re in one whole heap of trouble if you don’t let him go in –“

Glendower waved at his sons, his nephews.  They loosened their grip on her arms, and did the same with Duke.  But not before landing a wooden-handled blow that sent him to the deck. Then  they backed off as well. Out of reach anyway. 

She went to him, wiped the blood from his split lip.  She forbid his rage, stroking his cheek until he focused on her.  Not them.  “Don’t, Duke.  The last thing you want is their blood on your hands.”  Literally.  She stood between him and the Glendowers.

“What is this about?”

“Duke Crocker’s curse is active, that’s what this is about.  Simon Crocker hunted us like fish.  He killed twenty or more Troubled people before he hunted your predecessor down, and we are going to stop Simon’s son from following in his father’s footsteps.”

“You condemn him before he’s acted, then.  Based on what his father did.  A father and a legacy he has rejected at every turn.”

“Why do you defend him?  You, of all people?  He killed Audrey Parker.  Simon killed Lucy Ripley.  It’s what they do.”

“ _No, he didn’t_.  Audrey is still in me.”  They were all with her.

“What?”

“It’s true.”  Duke spoke up, standing behind her.  Backing her up.  “And my father never did anything to the Glendowers, or you wouldn’t be where you are now.”

“Don’t try to justify his crimes, boy.  It wasn’t for lack of trying.”

“ _Get off my boat_.”

Cole Glendower looked at him, at her.  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, to her.  She felt Duke flinch behind her, though she knew it wouldn’t have shown to anyone on the outside.

The others were starting to look a bit strangled, this argument lasting longer than they expected, longer than they could comfortably breathe air.  Glendower waved the others into the sea, which they gratefully did, diving in with bare minimum splashes.  “Don’t come back out here,” Cole said.  “You won’t get another chance.”  He dove in himself.

Dana clung to Duke, not sure who was supporting whom.

 

 


	9. A Sea of Troubles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To be, or not to be--that is the question:  
> Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer  
> The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune  
> Or to take arms against a sea of troubles  
> And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--  
> No more--and by a sleep to say we end  
> The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks  
> That flesh is heir to.  
> \- Hamlet (William Shakespeare)

Dave greeted  Nathan easily as the police chief entered the Herald’s office.  “Chief.”  It wasn’t odd anymore to refer to the young man by his father’s title.  Two years, and despite everything, Nathan was still here, the town was still here.  The Troubles were still here, too, but Dave knew that was not Nathan’s fault.  Of all people Dave knew that.

He stood, would have offered to shake hands – it wasn’t actually often that the Chief stopped by, not anymore – but Nathan paced by the door, as if coiled on the rebound.  What he wanted wasn’t here, apparently.  Headed out to search elsewhere.

“Can I help you with something?”

“Vince.  Is Vince around?”

Dave scrolled through in his mind any possible crimes Vince might have committed before answering.  Couldn’t think of anything that would have concerned the police…

But Nathan’s tone was worried, and frustrated.  Not the murderous anger he’d had the last time he’d barged in the office with that question.  Of course, Dave knew exactly where Vince was; morning deliveries, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  Nathan should have known it too.

Nathan took a deep breath, as evidently the memory came back to him, too.  “Sorry.  I should have…  I’m sorry.”  Uncoiling.  Recoiling…  Clearly Nathan was wound up about something.  Dave was who he was, and watching the other man now was like a tennis ball to a Border Collie.

It was interesting that Nathan had come in looking for Vince though, Dave thought. Despite their history.   It was _Her_ , as Dave thought of her.  Sarah/Lucy/Audrey.  Dana/Audrey, now.  _Her,_ like that was her name.  It was something about that connection she made – with Nathan, with Vince once upon a time – that somehow ineffably connected the men in her lives to each other.  A connection that had from the beginning threatened the relationship even between brothers, and that Dave had… ah, well, they’d all been younger then.  And foolish.

“Maybe I can help?” Dave offered again.  Nathan looked out on the street, considering perhaps, how much to share.  How much to trust.

“The Cape Rouge is out of port, I see,” Dave observed, getting himself a cup of coffee.

Nathan ignored this as an opening too, but Dave had guessed that it had to have something to do with Duke Crocker.  There was a special kind of twist in his shorts that Nathan always got…

Nathan planted himself, there in the foyer, arms crossed and feet fixed shoulder width – braced against whatever storm was coming, looking out the front windows. Looking like he was going to stay.  Keeping watch.  Only by a flick of eyelids could Dave read the worry there.  He wasn’t going to talk about it, but he couldn’t stand being alone with it anymore either.  Thus the search for Vince.

Dave sat, pulled up the front page he’d just been working on.  Council debate on the speed zones in town.  About actually increasing the speed limits for once.

It was fully possible that Nathan would decide to just wait for Vince to come back.

“When are they due back?”

“Four hours ago.”   Three words bitten out reluctantly like chewed leather.  “She’s late for work.”

New front page, Dave mused.  Missing boat, lost at sea, excellent story – great for selling papers.   And then the thought as if from the other side of his brain… Her and the Crocker heir.  Audrey was out with Duke on that boat.  Everyone knew that.  Audrey/Dana was out with Duke and that wild card of a half-brother Dirk.  He could not wish harm to Audrey Parker or Dana Bellamy but…

Was it now, could it be?  Was it over, now, after so long?  Not what he’d hoped – dammit, not what he’d worked so hard for so long for – but if the Troubles were over, at least this time ’round…

“Maybe it’s just engine trouble,” Dave suggested, as if Nathan was a worried father with a teenage daughter.  On a date with Duke Crocker.

Nathan’s head turned on a swivel at the unfortunate choice of word.  Dave fidgeted at his desk, back to the window and didn’t he feel exposed just at the moment.

“Maybe,” Nathan allowed, but did not seem to believe it. 

More watching for someone who was not coming.

“It wasn’t Audrey,” Nathan announced – more or less out of the blue, a full five minutes later.  An announcement with a question mark attached.

Dave blinked, and waited.  The picture of innocence.  Doddering innocence, even, though he knew Vince was much better at the age-impaired façade.  Maybe because more of it was true.

“That wasn’t Audrey who went on the boat with Duke,” Nathan expanded, still not looking at him.

A virtual walking wiki of information, Dave considered.  Although, maybe playing dumb was not the best move at the moment.  Maybe, this was Nathan’s way of asking for his help.

Twitch of glasses higher, and Dave bloody knew that was his tell.  Goddammit.   “I figured.”  Cleaning his glasses now, and he may as well have signed a confession.  Well, Audrey wasn’t likely to go off anywhere with Duke, though, was she?  It had to have been the other one, Dana.  Dave cursed his slowness.   He should have realized.

Now what?

“Dana came back after the fire,” Nathan said.

That surprised him, and he didn’t try to hide it.  “That… long ago?”  That… was new information.  That meant… Dave wasn’t sure right away what that meant.

It meant that Nathan had been keeping it secret, to start with.  It meant... jesus, it meant that she’d gone out there with Duke Crocker and Dirk Harrison – she was alone with both of Simon’s sons – innocent of their archetypal if not preordained roles in each other’s lives.  Thinking they were all just good friends.

“Was that what you wanted?  What you intended?”

Dave reaction was not feigned this time.  It actually took him a couple seconds to follow the change in tone, the change in accusation.  “I’m sorry?”

“When you set fire to the Gull.  You were trying to bring Dana back?”

“Nathan, I don’t –”  Interesting phrasing, Dave noted, a little remotely.  Positive angle, ‘help me understand’ questioning.  He’d never actually been under police interrogation before.  And – he breathed the realization – that’s what was going on now.

Nathan suspected him.

“Because now I really don’t understand.  I don’t understand how you thought it might …help… in the first place, but if that isn’t what you wanted… What _did_ you hope to accomplish?”

Nathan hadn’t come here to talk to Vince.

He knew perfectly well that Vince was on deliveries right now.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“What I don’t get is why you did it yourself.”  As if Dave hadn’t spoken.  “It was amateur hour really, Dave.  Don’t you have a firestarter or someone like that,  just on call or something?”

Dave wiped perspiration from his upper lip, as Nathan’s words – soft, almost sympathetic, not an accusation at all, certainly not from the Chief of Police –  brought the memory back vividly.  The dishtowels that he’d tried first (as if laid on an open flame) had only smoldered weakly, and threatened to set off the smoke alarm before any real damage was done.  The kitchen was spotless – no greasy dish left on the stove, no spilled oil, and even the trash emptied every night.  His final attempt with gasoline had worked, but not without a terrifying brush with a near explosion.  Professional arsonist he was not.  He figured his eyebrows were mostly recovered…  Was Nathan just guessing?

But then Dave saw the way Nathan fingered Dave’s hat, resting on the coatrack by the door.  Fingered the singed and sad looking feathers that had once graced the band there, now reduced to mere stubs.

“That’s the thing about this condition of mine,” conversationally, “the smell of gas just sticks to everything.  For weeks.”

Dave steepled fingers in front of his face.  Fine, not a guess.

“You can’t keep a firestarter as a pet, Nathan.”  Obviously.  That was the kind of Trouble that could crack the world in two.  There hadn’t been one of those in Haven for a couple generations, and with any luck that particular curse had burnt itself out.  So to speak.

But not courtroom level evidence either.  Otherwise he’d be in a cell by now.  He wasn’t going to confess… so why had Nathan come barging in with the story about wanting Vince?

Nathan wanted something, still.

“Are they really overdue?” Dave asked, not sure where ruse ended and reality began.  Hope faded that Dana had finally ended the Troubles.  That Duke Crocker was dead.  Nathan was fully capable of burying the lead – even a good cop had to keep secrets all the time – but not, surely, that his sense of touch had suddenly come back.  Or that his sense of smell was less acute.

Which meant… something on the Cape Rouge had possibly gone badly wrong.

“Just tell me why.” 

Dave didn’t miss that anger that was reluctantly and forcibly tucked back under control, but the affable surface of Nathan Wuornos was gone.    “Nathan, you should really find Audrey – or Dana.  Her.  _Find her_.”  Not to deflect his own culpability, but… not _just_ to deflect his own culpability, but because – even though the Teagues curse of writing something that later came true had long ago been cured by one of Duke’s  ancestors – Dave still _knew_ , somehow.  This was it.

This was what he’d been working towards for three iterations of the Troubles.

_“Nathan, hon?  They want you down at the docks.”_

 

The Cape Rouge was tied up at her regular spot when he got down there, looked in good shape.  For a forty-year-old fourth-hand ex-trawler turned smuggler/cruiser/liveaboard.  Seaworthy, anyway.  The only thing that looked amiss were the uniformed Coast Guard officers crawling all over her, securing her lines, inspecting her holds.

Nathan shook hands with someone – by the number of gold braids someone of up-there rank, but someone Nathan could barely manage to be civil to, because he insisted on standing on the dock talking about jurisdiction when Nathan wanted to walk right through him if need be.

“… crimes at sea are of course federal jurisdiction…”

Nathan focused on him.  “What crime?”

“Well, we haven’t – with a suspicious death it’s better to assume the worst and then determine charges.  And we know this boat.  There may be smuggling charges depending on what’s hidden under all that ice.”

“Whose death?”

The officer blinked at him, thrown off course by an unexpected shoal.  “I thought they told you.”

 

_The party started early.  Duke turned the music up loud, brought out wine for her, scotch for himself and his brother, and they danced. Out on the deck, the sun rising behind them, the Rouge unzipping the sea under full steam – or diesel, as the case may be – her workhorse heart seeming fully realized to be back at work again, making a mockery of her time bound to the shore. This was why she was made._

_They danced, and made fantastic plans for the new restaurant.  A tropical theme.  A space alien theme.  An ice and arctic theme, in order to honor the iceberg that had given so much of itself to them.  No, Vikings!_

_Duke even danced with Dirk – held his neck while they were forehead to forehead.  Called him brother, and promised equal shares in everything, from now on.  They were family.  They were young and pretty and they were going to be rich._

_Duke danced with Dana, and they said nothing.  Promised nothing, not verbally.  There was no need._

 

Up on deck were the remains of a party, looked like, now scattered and trashed.  Broken glasses, bottles.  The forward cabin door was wide open –  whose, Nathan didn’t know.  Dirk’s, possibly.  Nathan knew enough about boats that he knew you didn’t leave a door open like that while underway.  The coasties surely did, too.  So someone had…

The heavily braided officer was still nattering on about the investigation, crime scene techs that had to come from Quantico.  Don’t touch anything, but she wanted to see you and since she is Haven PD we thought…

Wait, what?  “Me?”  She?  She was alive.  For the first time, Nathan thought the thought that he hadn’t allowed himself to think because he already knew the answer.  She was alive.

“Audrey Parker?  Your detective?  She says she’ll only talk to you.  Didn’t ask for a lawyer yet, just so you know, and while I understand she’s your officer, she’s also our suspect.”

 

_“It’s you, isn’t it?”_

_Dirk’s whole body shouted ‘threat’, no matter the soft, even silky words, catching Dana by surprise in the narrow passageway between their cabins.  Duke was up on the bridge…_

_The thought surprised Dana, as much as Dirk’s sudden appearance.  She blinked at him.  Alarm and alarum – but why?  “Is what me?”  Her voices – if they’d had feet they would have scurried for cover by now.  She told them to hush._

_She wasn’t afraid of Dirk.  She’d just faced off a whole family – pod? school? – of water-breathing men who’d leaped from the deep to try to kill her boyfriend and they’d fled, let Duke go and jumped back into the cold sea just because she’d said so.  Because she was who she was… and that meant something to them._

_She was not afraid of Dirk annoying Harrison, whatever had spooked her voices.  Her past lives. Her other selves.  She was who she was, and that had to mean something._

_Dirk held up a small black notebook, hers.  Her diary, her sanity, which had been deliberately if inadequately hidden under her pillow.  The violation of it struck her first._

_“ ‘The next time you drink that much you might at least stick around for the hangover.’”  Her words in his voice sounded weak, and snide._

_“You bastard.”  She didn’t demand he give it back or not read it.  Obviously it was too late for that, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.  But her tentative bravado in even that puny attempt to communicate with Audrey, and Dirk’s liquid hatred as he ripped the page from the book… and ate it… made her feel sick.  All at sea, as they said._

_She stared at him. “There is something really really wrong with you.”_

_“Says the woman who is Audrey Parker one day,” shaking the notebook like a piggybank with one last nickel rolling around inside it, a secret he would get out one way or another,  “and the next,_ some other person entirely _,” he hissed._

_He tore out another page._

_“Stop that!”  This time she reached, tried to grab it, but he held her off with one hand, held the diary aloft with the other.  He was strong – nearly a foot taller than her, and not shy with using it against her.  He tossed her aside one-handed, the effort effortless, and she banged her head on some out-poking bit of steel, her skull rattled like a dried out gourd.  She tried to stand, couldn’t make it._

_This pleased him, as he tore the paper into neat square bits.  Showered her with the pieces._

_“Who is Dana Bellamy?”_

 

She sat on the stateroom bench, handcuffed, with two armed Coast Guard officers stationed in the room with her.

She couldn’t help the little gulp of relief when Nathan finally appeared, tried to hide it, tried to be strong and independent and even in charge.  She could do annoyed.  Nathan ignored it – like he knew instantly that she was not okay and not even a little in charge, pulled her to her feet, wrapped her in a full body hug in front of everyone.  Brushed her hair behind her ears, noted bruises and checked her eyes.  Nodded minutely.  She was Audrey.

“Don’t say anything.”

What you say can be used against you… she knew that.  “Hi?”  She didn’t need a lawyer to represent her.  “I’m fine.”    

“Hi, yourself.”   _You’re not fine_ , his eyes said, and _don’t bother trying to tell me you are._  He laughed briefly, and she understood the message that she wanted to see him had somehow become garbled, and she’d scared him unnecessarily.  “Duke?”

She shook her head.  Trouble and trouble.  “Not fine.”

 

_“WHO IS DANA BELLAMY!?”  Dirk threw the notebook at her, hard enough that she flinched, but she kept her attention on him._

_“Me.  I am.”_

_He lifted his head, surprised by her direct answer.  “Who is Audrey Parker?”_

_She lifted her hand, answering the teacher.  “Me.”_

_That seemed to stump him for a second or two.  Dirk leaned in even closer.  “’The one who changes, and never changed.’”  Obviously a quote, and Dirk’s voice was clenched and hoarse, fisted against her ear.  Dana forced herself not to shudder, not to react at all._

_“My father came to see me, the night before he died.”  An intimate confession, shared between the two of them.  “He said there was a woman hunting him –  one who changes and never changed.  He told me she was coming to kill him.”  Her pulled out a gun – her gun, Audrey’s gun Dana realized,  - Christ-  when Duke had rid the Cape Rouge of all of his two years ago.  She felt a little ridiculous as he put the nose of the weapon under her chin, and lifted it, almost gently.  Stupid, stupid, stupid._

_“Did you kill my father?”_

_It wouldn’t hurt, she thought, a little randomly.  Not like the last time.  But her death would probably kill Duke, and that is what finally stung tears to her eyes.  His pupils flared, satisfaction for getting a reaction from her at last.  “I don’t know,” she admitted.  “I don’t remember.”_

_“But it could have been?” he questioned, maybe his real question after all.  “It could have been you, thirty years ago?”  The one who changes, and never changed._

_She attempted a smile, and Dirk reacted by twitching her chin higher, then backing off a step. Dana rubbed at her throat.  “Could have been, I guess.  I don’t know how it works,” she admitted.   “You read –” and then stopped, because reminding him of the dropped diary was probably not a good move.  “I wake up one morning and I’m me.  I wake up the next and… it’s two weeks, twenty days later and someone else – Audrey – has been in control.  They tell me I’ve been other people in the past too.  Dirk, I don’t know.”  She wiped her eyes, wiped snot from her nose._

_It was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.  Because she could feel the others within her.  Feel their reactions to Simon Crocker’s son holding a gun on her, feel their conflicting impulses to fight and to flee.  All these different women, all their various experiences and lives, different shades of courage and fear – some braver, some more cautious, some thoughtful and forgiving.  And one or two warriors, like her, whose instincts were to take up arms._

_Dana Bellamy had not suffered from these conflicting voices.  That much she remembered.   She’d lived her life in the moment nearly every moment of her life, not looking back nor too far into the future.  An impulse to help had led to joining the Army, while a dislike of shooting and hurting people had led to the medical corps, ironically bringing her closer to the front lines than nearly any other female soldier.  Dana’s world had been very black and white – friends and enemies easily defined – and then she had died._

_But she wasn’t just Dana Bellamy, not anymore.  She was Audrey too, and she felt other names floating up to her consciousness, Lucy, Sarah, Marie, Joan…  she could almost see them, as they stood up within her, broke free from the bonds that had suppressed them for so many years._

_She stood, managing slowly.  It was a bit of a kaleidoscope in her head right now.  A bit like those movies and TV shows with multiple camera views shown all at once.  It took some effort to focus on just one.  Simon – no, Dirk, this one was Dirk – took another step back, the gun wavering in his hand as he pointed it at her.  She wondered what he saw that frightened him so._

_“Stop it!  Stop looking at me like that!”_

_She didn’t know how she was looking at him – she barely noticed him as her others filled her, nearly overwhelmed her._

_She knew.  She understood.  Everything._

_Lucy recognized him.  “I’m so sorry, Dirk.  I didn’t kill Simon – your father.  But he died because of me, in a way.  I would have saved him if I could.  But his curse,”  she reached out to Dirk, so like the man she had cared deeply about, before the terrible Crocker curse had changed everything…_

_“Put down the gun, Dirk,” Duke said slowly._

_Duke was not on the bridge, not anymore.  Oh god, he couldn’t be here._

_Dirk spun her around, flash bright and quick, twisted her  into his arms and held the gun to her head as he faced his brother.  She was hostage, and she watched as Duke stepped out into the passageway, open hands wide._

_“Duke…”  How could she explain it all to him?  “I’m so sorry.”_

_His eyes narrowed, then flicked up.  He was watching his brother, not her.  “That bullet isn’t going anywhere but to me, you know.  Put the gun down.”_

_“It goes through her first.” Dirk said._

_“You don’t want to shoot me, do you, my big brother?”_

_“It’s all her fault! She is going to kill us.  She has to, that’s what-” Duke waved the gun around, pointing it at Duke, then back at her as he spoke – once more at Duke, more to make his point than as a threat really – and Duke charged._

_Dirk fired._

_She screamed, as Duke went down clutching his chest, his eyes locked on hers.  Not even time to draw breath as he died before he hit the floor.   Her elbow to Dirk’s kidney – he went down to one knee.  She kicked the gun from his hand, sending it spinning down the hallway – but Dirk backhanded her into the wall, the steel corner of the bulkhead bursting her shoulder out of joint._

_Dirk went for the gun, stumbling himself._

_One look at the too still form of Duke, crumpled in a heap like a forgotten doll, and she crawled away._

 

They could hear things being thrown around in the hold/storeroom as they approached.  Two coasties on guard actually looked glad to see Nathan, escorted by the officer.  Who cocked his head at the door and shrugged.  _You see what we’re dealing with._   It sounded like a gorilla beating on a Samsonite in there.  The walls actually shook with impact, showering them with rust and dust.

“I thought he was restrained,” the commander said, embarrassed, with a brief glance at Nathan.  This was not how professionals handled prisoners.

‘He was, sir,” one of the men said, after checking with the other.  “He … musta broke every bone in his hands to do get loose.”

“Open the door.”  The two guards flinched, appalled at the order.  Nathan didn’t repeat himself, just lifted his chin a little. 

Their commander nodded, after a moment, cleared his throat.  “The guys in the white coats with the big drugs are coming to take him,” he said, apologetically.  “I don’t know what happened _out there_ –”  out at sea,  “but he was in there, like this, when we got aboard.”

He stopped Nathan with a hand on his arm when Nathan started forward, and Nathan recognized the look.  Trouble, and no explanation.  “There was a fire, but nothing was burnt.”  He stepped back, let Nathan enter.

 

_She ducked as a bullet rang out against the metal hull, rang the entire boat like a fire alarm.  Ducked, and the shot missed – or the shot missed and she ducked, because how Dirk could have missed, the hallway short and Dirk right behind her, she didn’t – Duke!  He was up again, and had pulled the bullet off course…_

_“Duke – get away!  Please!” she called.  How many times could he stand it?  Their gun held seventeen bullets – how many times could Duke get shot and still get back up again?_

_Dirk faced away from her as she stepped into the main stateroom, faced off with Duke, gun raised to eye level.  Would Duke be able to recover from a shot to the head?  They didn’t know._

_“Dirk, I can explain,” they said._

_“Get out of here,” Duke ordered, stepping closer to the gun._

_Ordered her, but not by name.  Did not look at her and that could be because his attention was all on his brother, or it could be because he could not stand to look at her.  At them._

_“I killed you,” Dirk cried, actually cried, tears streaking down his cheeks and eyes rimmed red.  “I killed my brother – and you can’t be him -”_

_“Yeah, you shot me,” Duke acknowledged, hands wide and patient.  “Which, by the way, you bastard – that hurt.  But I am not dead, look.” He laughed, patted his chest, - which, considering the  bloody holes in his shirt was more than a little frightening on its own, “just me,  your little brother, like always.  It’s all good.  Just put down the gun, Dirk, and we’ll get through this.  All of us.”_

_They believed him.  Surely anyone would believe him, so calm, so cool.  Dirk was freaked right now but surely…_

_Dirk swung around to point the gun at her.  “Not her.  Not the witch.”  Turned his back on Duke.  “I was looking for you.  This is all your fault.  The one who changes –”_

_And froze, his gaze shifting from her to something internal, to himself – to the blade that stuck out of his chest just below his breastbone.  He fell to the floor._

_They grabbed the pistol, emptied the chamber and dropped the ammunition magazine, threw it across the room._

_Duke ignored her,  kneeling, pulled Dirk into his arms.  The blade was buried up to its jewel encrusted hilt in Dirk’s back, and he tried to stem some of the bleeding on the front with his own hands, pressing down.  “You stabbed me in the back.”  Dirk attempted a breathy bloody laugh.  “You actually stabbed me in the back.”_

_“I know.  I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”_

_“You’re my brother.”_

_Duke rocked him, but had no answer.  He looked at the blood on his hands, blood that did not absorb, his blood that held no power, nothing beyond the could-have-been bonds of family.  Dirk’s hands gripped his, moved as if trying to pull the dagger free._

_“You’ll see.  It’s her.  Dad said…  Dad said…”_

_They would never know what Simon had said._

_Duke keened as he curled over his brother’s body, a cry of steel bent beyond breaking point, cold tortured._

_“Duke, I’m so sorry,” they whispered, reaching out.  He’d saved them, sacrificed for them – he threw her arm aside._

_“Dana.”_

_“What?”  They didn’t understand._

_“I want to talk to Dana,” he said slowly, not looking up, words distant.  “Just her.”_

_“She’s here.”  She was, wailing her grief inside them, his pain hers, distracting and unusually violent, but she could hear him._

_The dagger that had been buried in Dirk was suddenly pointed at them, still bloody.  “Wrong answer.”_

_They stared at it, at Duke Crocker holding a weapon on them.  It always came down to this.  One way or another, no matter what.  Here they were again.  How many times, how many centuries, and it always, somehow, came back to this._

_“I WANT TO TALK TO DANA!”_

_“What are you going to do with that, Duke?”  They didn’t know who spoke at first, or maybe it was all of them.  Audrey was there, and Dana.  Two of them who loved this man holding a knife on them, who had changed the pattern of what had gone before.  They could still break free of it.  Maybe.  “Are you going to stab us to get to her?”  Cut away what wasn’t Dana?_

_“Please,” he begged.  The blade dropped to the floor.  At first they thought he was begging for his brother’s life.  But it was too late, even for Dana’s skills._

_“Please.  Just tell me why.”_

_Her monkey king.  Dana fought her way to the surface, pushed the others aside, and they let her.  Reached out and brushed tears and bangs.  “I will.  I promise.  Not much longer now.”_

 

Dave followed the ambulance down the dock, followed the Freddy’s orderlies on board, nodding to the coast guardsmen in distracted professionalism.  He was not responsible for their assumptions, he never said he was a doctor – but he’d been a reporter for even longer than he’d been chasing the Troubles.  Getting in where he was not wanted was just part of the job.

One body under a sheet on a gurney, waiting on deck.  Dave checked under the sheet.  Sighed his regret.  Not that Dirk had ever had a chance, really.   He was – had been – a Crocker, through and through, regardless of his legal birth name.  Which left only one Crocker heir now, in Haven.

This had to be it.  Duke’s daughter was doing well in Nebraska, Dave had cause to know.  A pretty happy child, the light of her adopted family’s life – but god help them if they didn’t get it right this time and she had to come back to Haven.  God help them, this had to be it.

It was up to Duke now.

 

_The Cape Rouge seemed to stumble, shudder – a physical vibration that passed by in a wave, and she slowed.  Lost power, rocked stern high and then bow as her own wake passed her by._

_The engines were dead.  She tried pushing what buttons she could, but none of her past lives included any experience at the controls of a large modern ship.  Or even an old rust bucket like this one.  Duke… Duke was probably drinking himself into unconsciousness right now – but they had to get back to Haven._

_She could hear things being thrown around in the engine room before she got to bottom of the ladder.  She heard screams, and she jumped.  “Duke!”  Please, not the Glendowers again._

_She ducked in low, crossing the passageway and getting a glimpse of what was going on inside.  A crate of some sort came flying out of the air at her.  She barely ducked in time.  “Whoever you are, you are not getting out of here.  Where is Duke?  Is he okay?”_

_No answer, just a grunting heaving animal noise.  A wounded animal noise.  “Who’s in there?”_

_“Come watch it burn.  Watch it all burn.”_

_That was Duke’s voice.  Sort of.  She stepped inside the engine room.  It looked like the aftermath of an explosion.  Of a suicide bomb.  Blood splattered over everything, thrown, a paintball war of blood._

_“Duke!”_

_Blood dripped down the jeweled blade in his hand. Duke ran it down the length of his own arm, slicing it like cold butter.  His blood gushed out, and he gathered a handful of it, watched it, then let it dribble through his fingers.  “Look how pretty it burns.”_

_“Duke…” she moaned._

_He pointed the knife – the dagger, double-edged and a foot long, tapering to an elegant delicate tip – at her throat.  “My blood.  My Crocker blood, my cursed blood.  You see this?  I tried to get rid of it.  It burns like acid and I tried to stop –” His tone swung abruptly almost cheerful, an unexpected twenty dollar bill in his pocket.  Look what I found.   “I can’t die. I tried. It just heals again.  How the hell about that?”_

_“Duke, stop it.  This isn’t you.”  Sarah was the coldly practical one.  Most of the others were busy holding Dana back._

_“Is this me?”  He held up his arm, shoulder height, and they both watched as the long gash, pouring out his blood, knitted itself together as if it had never been.  He took the blade and did the same on the other arm.  Cut himself, let the blood pour out.   “I killed him.  I saved you, but I killed him.  I –” Duke stopped, bright-eyed, looked at her as if he’d just had a new thought._

_“_ You _can kill me,” he said, a solution to the insolvable. “_ You _can make it stop.”  He offered her the dagger, hilt first.  “Look how it burns.  So pretty.”  He held out that arm and healed himself again. “But it doesn’t stop.  It burns even now.  I can feel every vein inside me like acid…”_

_“It isn’t burning, Duke.  It isn’t acid.  It’s just blood.”  Audrey was calm, but sympathetic.  Horrified, but this was still her friend.  She reached out and touched his shoulder, and he didn’t move away._

_“Make it stop.  It hurts.  Please, Dana.  Audrey, please make it stop.”_

_She took the dagger from him, her hands dripping the same as his.  “Will you trust me, Duke?  You have to trust me.”_

_He could only nod, sliding to his knees.  His hands slid down her ribs, to her waist, to her hips.  Held himself there, not looking at anything, anywhere.  “Yes,” barely audible.  “Please, please, please –”_

_She hit him, hilt first, just behind his ear._

 

_Omnia vincit amor._

Nathan sat on the stateroom bed, held the lid to the ornate silver box in one hand, what he’d found after searching the room for something, anything, that would explain what had happened aboard the Cape Rouge.  The bottom  was loose in his other hand, along with Evi’s note, still there two years after she’d died.  The glowing Crocker name was faded now – after Nathan had followed the directions and saw for himself. 

He didn’t understand.  Why this, now?  Why, all of it?

He wanted desperately to feel the squeeze on his heart that must be there.  He wanted to feel the lump in his throat and the pounding of his head, and even – as he tasted salt on his lips – the burn of tears.  He wanted to know what he was feeling as he felt it because he didn’t know what to call this _–this–_ that wanted to burst out from inside him, tear him apart from the inside.

Of course, he thought bitterly, as Dave Teagues knocked on the open door.  “Not a good time, Dave.”  He didn’t even care what Dave was up to now, how he got on board.  He had nothing left to spare for them, either of them, and their impotent conspiracies.

Duke was off the charts crazy – Nathan had persuaded the guards to let him try to talk to him, try to calm him down, but it only seemed to rev Duke up to ever greater ravings about burning blood and begging Nathan to kill him.  But then the drop of blood from the injection of sedatives – after the Taser and the four orderlies and the straitjacket – had hissed and spit flame like a birthday sparkler, and Duke’s nosebleed lit up with the soft light of spilt kerosene.

“You see,” Duke had said, watching their reactions.  “She couldn’t see it.  I tried to show her.”

_Her_ , according to Duke, who was neither Dana nor Audrey. And she wanted Duke dead.

But Dave didn’t go away, just stood there, twisting something in his hands.  “Nathan, I’m sorry, but there’s something I think you should see.”

Which meant that Dave wanted to wind Nathan up again like his own toy soldier and send him off in another direction, another windmill tilt, another skirmish as their sacrificial proxy while the Teagues sat back and watched from the sidelines.  Again. Well, screw that.

“No.”

“Nathan, this is –”

“No.”

Dave held out the rolled up piece of paper in his hand.  “Dirk had a map.  Passed down through generations of Crockers, I think.  If you look –”

“Why did you set fire to the Gull?”

Dave looked stumped for a moment, trying to think up an acceptable lie, maybe.  Maybe just annoyed that Nathan was still harping on that.   “I wanted to break Duke Crocker.  I wanted to take something away from him that he couldn’t stand to lose.”

Nathan wanted to be sick.  Wanted to feel his disgust, not just this dull distant anger.  “You got your wish.”  Congratulations.

“The Troubles have to end, Nathan.  One way or another.  Duke Crocker has to die.  And they were just going to go on and on if you three went on pretending that you are all such good friends while the rest of Haven gets chunks taken out of it with every new Trouble.”

Not pretending, he wanted to shout.  He hadn’t been pretending to be friends with Duke.  Poor destroyed Duke, finally driven insane by the burden of Troubles no one could have been expected to carry.  Audrey… owned his soul.  He wasn’t pretending about any of it.  Damned if he was going to help them kill each other, Troubles or no.

“Go tell it to someone who cares.”

When he looked up again, Dave was gone, and Nathan hadn’t noticed him leave.  So be it.

_Omnia vincit amor._   Love conquers all.

Why?

Agent Howard had said that to him.  Dana’s professor boyfriend Corey – but talking to him.  Why would Duke have this?  He knew the story about Simon’s weapons, and even how Dwight and Duke had fought over possession of the box, how Duke had cut Dwight and absorbed Dwight’s curse, starting everything…

Duke had never mentioned the inscription.

_Friendship isn’t wrong_ , Dana had said.

Nathan remembered his failure when Audrey had disappeared, how he had given up.  And his vow to never do that again.  He was her bedrock.  He loved her, Audrey, he only now knew how much.  When he loved her even when she was more than just Audrey alone.

… and love conquered all.

 

“Tell Nathan!” she yelled to Dave Teagues, as the Coast Guard men escorted her out onto the Cape Rouge’s deck.  The US Marshals were here, apparently, to take her into custody and there was nothing she could do.  Dave had unscrolled it for her, since her hands were handcuffed behind her back and the guards were less than interested in letting her talk to anyone.  They were escorting Dave off the boat too, looked like, since he’d exposed himself as a reporter, asking to get a statement from her in order to get close enough to show her the map.

God, if it fell into their hands, it could be lost for generations more.  And she hadn’t even had a good look…

Dirk _bloody_ Harrison had had it.  Simon’s gift, no doubt.  The Crocker family legacy actually written down on parchment almost four hundred years ago.  Rumours of the map had surfaced, and been forgotten, over the generations.  A map to the heart of the Troubles.

Dave yelled back something she couldn’t quite catch.  Nothing positive, from what she read of his tone and body language.  She bucked and fought against the hands holding her, pleaded with them to let her talk to him.  Nathan had to know.  He would help.  He’d gone to check on Duke, and then nothing… They were taking her away.

They were taking her away from him, again, and she had to tell him – make sure he knew she would come back, one way or another.  God, she was going to have to start all over again…

But here was something odd.  Stan and Bill, in suits, two Haven PD officers pulling up to the boat in a dark blue sedan.  Stan flashed FBI credentials – Audrey’s credentials! – too fast to be closely inspected while Bill just looked bored behind his dark glasses.  Stan signed the form the coastie held out for him – government work meant paperwork… and they shook hands.  Then the coast guard men left her behind on the dock, went back aboard the Rouge, while Bill indicated the backseat for her.

He undid her cuffs first.

Inside the car, rubbing at her wrists, she wasn’t even sure she was free as Stan backed the car down the dock.  “Impersonating federal officers, boys?”  is pretty damn illegal.

Stan actually grinned, sparing her a glance, arm extended over the seat and looking out the back window.

“Nathan said we should use our imagination,” Bill supplied, laconic and dry as ever.  “His,” meaning Stan’s, his imagination, “in this case.  Not mine.”

“Nathan has gone after Duke,” Stan said.  And threw the car  into a 180 as soon as he hit dirt, accelerated up the hill.

 

Stopping the ambulance taking Duke to the Freddy was merely a matter of getting ahead of it, skidding across the road with lights flashing, and pulling out his badge.

The orderlies stepped out when he asked, confused, but it wasn’t like they were fleeing criminals.  They were health professionals – sort of – and worried about their patient more than anything. Even beyond why the police chief had stopped them.  That sedative was going to wear off in a few minutes and it had taken four of them to restrain Duke last time.  And a Taser.

Did Nathan have a Taser?

He did, but he wasn’t interested in answering their questions.  If he stopped long enough to think, he was only going to start doubting, questioning.  And he couldn’t afford that.

Bill and Stan pulled up moments later.  Nathan could hear his heart racing, even if he couldn’t feel it.  He’d left the boat after seeing Duke without talking to her again and, as she stepped out of the back seat of the car, he acknowledged to himself that he was scared.  Of her.  Of who she was now, and of losing Audrey.  But her eyes were Audrey’s deep sea blue, and her hair caught the breeze the way Audrey’s did, and she smiled at him, almost – _god,_  almost –  exactly the way Audrey did. 

“Thank you,” holding his elbow, and it was almost the same as when he’d given her Lucy’s address.  Sincere, and surprised.  Grateful.

He’d guessed, frankly, that she would want Duke for something.  That there was a reason for Duke to have that message from his past. There was a reason she was aimed at both of them, beloved by both of them.   There had to be a reason.  He had the sense too that this was now or never. 

“What now?”

“Dave Teagues has Dirk’s map. I need that.”

Nathan nodded at Stan, who understood immediately.  “On it, Chief.”  He pulled out his phone, moved away.

It was odd, he thought, how much she looked like Audrey. And then, how odd that thought was.  In his mind Dana and Audrey had always been separate people.  One went away while the other was there, job sharing or something – but that had been facilitated by Dana’s brown eyes, not to mention the brash sometimes over the top personality. “What do I call you?”

Huh.  She smiled and ducked her head, looked up at him from under her lashes, just like Audrey.  Shifted uncomfortably on her feet.  “You can call me Audrey.  Nathan…”

And then silence, because what was there for him to say?  _Don’t kill Duke_?

A scream from inside the ambulance broke them apart, and she threw the doors wide.  Duke was strapped onto a gurney, strapped into a strait jacket.  He screamed again, and kicked, nearly freeing his legs.

She petted his face, pushing hair out  of his eyes, but Duke seemed completely lost, shaking her hand off his head, panting.  Words of comfort only seemed to make him worse.  She gestured Nathan into the vehicle beside her, at the same time as she searched the ambulance’s drawers and cabinets for something. 

Nathan climbed in beside her, not hesitating despite the way his friend’s state made him want to look away.  If Duke got loose, she would need his protection.

She found what she was looking for, a scalpel – and before he could comprehend or react – took Nathan’s hand, cut the tip of his finger, and pressed it against Duke’s forehead.  One of the few areas of exposed skin.

oh.

Oh god – Duke seemed to seize, a frozen catatonia, and his eyes turned white with power.

Nathan’s finger stung – more than he ever remembered such a small cut stinging before.

Years ago.

Oh god.  “ _What did you do_?” he asked.  Like Duke needed more Trouble.

Duke passed out, falling unconscious.

“His blood was burning, from the inside out,” she said, not taking her eyes off Duke.  “Synergy. Killing his brother set off an emotional crisis the welded the Troubles he’d absorbed over the years into this wholly new one.  The pain of it was what was driving him mad.”

That was not Audrey.  That was not how Audrey would have said that.  “Who are you?”  Not to  mention that Audrey would have asked first.

“Nathan – we’re not – we’re all here, all together.”

“It sounds… crowded.”

She laughed.  “It is.”  Duke moaned, waking up.  Blinked clear brown, and sensible.

“Hey, you,” he said. His bright and happy look of recognition faded as worse and more recent memories surfaced.  Duke looked from her to Nathan, back to her.  Tested the straitjacket.  “This is going to be worse than Bangkok, isn’t it?”

 

Dave met them at the Fisherman’s Memorial.  Or rather, the three of them met him there, him and Vince, as per his instructions.

It was an unimpressive block of granite, about six foot tall, shaped in the classic obelisk style, parked in the middle of the roundabout of three roads. The center of Haven, utterly ignored by… everyone.  The root of the Troubles.

“This?” Duke questioned as they walked up to it.  The stone was carved with the names of fishermen lost at sea in generations past.  “You’re sure this is it?”  Real names of real people, real tragedies in the dangerous business of fishing – nothing associated with the Troubles that anyone knew.

“This is the spot,” Dave said. “According to the map.”  It was with less than his usual authority, as his gaze shifted between the three of them.  Vince was frankly staring at her.

“Vinnie, you dog. Put 'em back in your head.”  Her smile was wide, her eyes shining with unshed tears as she saw him.  “I’m too old for you.”  He huffed, and had to look away.

“I’m sorry about Dirk,” Dave said, to Duke.

“Why are you sorry?” he bit back.  Yeah, that was too soon. 

Nathan stepped in between them.  “Why here?  What is this place?”

Dave showed them the map, held flat against the stone.  Nathan saw it right away.  “It looks like the tattoo.”

It was drawn with the bitter black of crushed oak galls, more permanent than any modern ink, but that only made the pattern stand out clearer.  A complicated maze of islands and bays and shorelines, it did indeed look very like the tattoo on Nathan’s arm.

“The Crevecoeur,” Dave said.  “From the French.  Literally, the heartbreak.”

“What?”

“That’s what it is really called, that tattoo.  The Crevecoeur.  It was adopted by those of the Troubled who –”

“Dave!” Nathan barked. 

Dave desisted on his lecture.  “But this must be its origin.”

“It does not look like any map of Haven.”  Nathan stubborn Wuornos.

She borrowed a pen from Vince and started redrawing certain edges, ignoring Dave’s gag reflex objection to altering such a historic document.  “The Great Hurricane of 1713 washed away this bit, made this into an island.  Tuwiuwok Bluff used to stretch out to about here – most of it slid into the sea back in…”

“1794,” Dave answered.

She nodded.  “Something like that.”  She filled in a bay with a few strokes of the pen, and a private smile and shake of her head, as if amused by the memory.  The others started to nod, the pattern resolving itself into a recognizable map.

And in the center, she stuck the tip of the pen.  And looked out across the harbor and the bay, where they could all see the now familiar outlines.  You are here.

Duke put his hand on the obelisk – the memorial. Slapped it a bit too hard. Both she and Nathan flinched.  Duke examined his hands.  “You know what,” Duke commented dryly, “you’re forgiven.  This sucks.”

“Forgiven for what?”

She stepped in between them, still able to push each other’s buttons even now.  “Boys.”

“The memorial was only put in in the 1930’s,” Vince supplied.  “New Deal public works thing.”

They all looked at her.  “Not the memorial,” she said after a moment.  “Underneath.  It’s called the Crevecoeur. We have to find the broken heart of Haven.”

Sudden understanding broke on Duke’s face, and they stared at each other.  And not a happy understanding either.  The crushing inevitability of fate.  Both Dave and Vince noticed, made noises about looking for something to move the stone – they moved discreetly away.

Nathan noticed, too, the way they stared at each other – but didn’t understand.  He stepped in close, blocking her view.  “To do what?”  All fierce guard dog, for Duke – even up to opposing her.

“Nathan…”  As if any of it could be avoided now.

“What are you going to do?”

“If I’m right, I’m going to end the Troubles for good.”

“By killing Duke.”  It wasn’t even a question anymore.

She had said they weren’t separate anymore – but it was Audrey’s swimming eyes who looked up at him, who looked like her heart was breaking for what she had to do.  “Please, Nathan.  This is hard enough as it is.”

“It’s all right.”  An unexpected voice, Duke’s, calm and sure.  A hand on Nathan’s shoulder, that Nathan felt, looked at, shrugged off.

“No, it’s not.”

“This is why, I think, we believe – why Audrey and Dana were chosen.  To be loved by you, and you Duke, so that you would trust us.  Max thought he was helping Simon escape… This time it will work, and the Troubles will never return.”

“I call that a fair trade,” Duke said.  Nathan stared at his friend, still not accepting.  “Crocker is the Anglicized version of Crevecoeur.  It was always going to be like this.”

“Your name means ‘heart break’?”  Nathan rubbed at his eyebrow, shifted his stance between her and Duke, as if not sure who he should confront.  “Your goddamn _name_ is ‘heart break’?”

“And yours is ‘the boy who stuck his finger in the dam.’  Just let it go, Nathan.”

Let them go.  He was going to lose them both. 

That realization is what stopped him, his objections.  He was being selfish.  He had once thought that he would condemn all of Haven to keep Audrey.  And then he’d lost her.  Lost himself.  Given this second chance when Audrey, impossibly, came back, and he’d vowed to be better.  Do better.  Christ, ironic now that he could feel, when all he wanted was to be numb and be able to do what was right, but when it _felt_ like it was tearing him in two.

Fine.

He turned away, got in his truck.  She called to him, but Duke held her back.  Then Nathan backed the Bronco up to the memorial stone, pulled out a heavy duty chain out of the back.  Duke understood, helped him loop it around the base of the memorial and onto the hitch.  Low gear, and the Bronco shifted the three ton stone off its base, until it tumbled over. Broke into three pieces.

The plinth at the base might have been marble, maybe granite, polished black and shiny, but it held shiny flakes of some mineral or material that reflected gold and green from deep within.  A beautiful stone.  But not native to the area, and obviously a late addition.  She nodded.  It had to go too.

She held Vince back as he moved in to help.  Let the boys do it.  She could feel his tremor under her hand and their eyes met.  Half a lifetime ago, and she remembered him tall and lean – fighting fit, as they said.  Those curls, buzzed short in those days, because curls were for girls and not for bad boy rebels like Vinnie Teagues.  Their eyes met, and they needed no words.  This time at least, she could say good-bye.

Between the two of them, Nathan and Duke lifted the stone.  Flipped it over to reveal the native bedrock beneath.  Pretty much the same as the rest of the rock found in the area, a dark grey rock, criss-crossed with light pink granite dykes.  Only here, the dykes all seemed to meet in the middle, forming a radiating star pattern in the rock.  Or – they started here, and radiated out, under all Haven and the surrounding area.  No telling how far.  And there were finger length crystals of a green gem – the same as in Garland Wuornos’ ring, in Sarah’s ring.  As on Lucy’s locket – but loose and broken within the matrix of the granite.

She ran her hand over the stone, and the green crystals glowed briefly, then faded.

“You knew this was here?” Nathan questioned.  He crouched beside her.

“It has always been here.  The Mi’kmaq knew it as a sacred place, where they could speak to their spirits, where they asked for blessings.  Where they brought their sick to be healed, and their cursed to be forgiven.  When the white men came – they called it blasphemy.  And witchcraft.  So much was lost.

“But it took a foolish, very vain young girl – betrayed in her first love – to turn those spirits into curses.  To start the Troubles.”

“What did you do?”

She smiled ironically at him. Because it had been her.  The first her – Charity Crocker – born with the ability to sense the power of the place, she had taken that power and corrupted it, poured her anger and her pride into the stone along with her blood – and she cursed a terrible curse.  Every generation would know her pain and suffering.  Only those who loved with a true heart would know any peace.  “I was caught in it myself, you see, forced to keep coming back, to love and to lose.  Over and over again.”

“And you need Duke because…”

“Because he can absorb Troubles.  Because he can cure them.”

“All of them?” Duke said, faintly.

“I won’t force you,” she said.  “I can’t.”

Duke looked thoughtfully out over the town.  Nathan stood beside him.  “There’s another way, Duke.  We just have to find it.”

Duke looked at him.  “There’s supposed to be a guy coming from New York, tomorrow, to offload all that ice.”

“Duke!”

“No, I’m serious.  We agreed on five bucks a pound – don’t let him cheat you.  Dry weight.  Split it up between the employees at the Gull.  Severance pay or something.”  Nathan looked away, not agreeing, but not disagreeing to this last request. Duke shrugged. “That’s all I got.  Oh,” as if remembering, “and you can have the boat.”

“I don’t want your boat, Duke.”

“Sell it, then, you ungrateful bastard.”  He clapped Nathan on the shoulder – as close as they were going to get to hugging it out – and sat cross-legged in front of her.

In her hands was one of the shards of crystal, almost six inches long and glowing brightly.  “Show me your wrists,” she instructed.  He did, pushing up his sleeves.  She put a sharp edge against the thin skin there, and hesitated.  Too long.

“What?  What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, tears streaking down her cheeks.  “Dana says:  lengthwise, not across.  Otherwise it will cut all your tendons.”

He cupped her chin, kissed her, hard.  Then looked down to discover that she had cut him, lengthwise, a long gash along his inner forearm.  He hadn’t felt a thing. The blood welled up and spilled over in a sheet, but burning yellow and orange.  She held his arm when he flinched reflexively, until he realized that didn’t hurt either.

His blood dripped onto the rock, flowed into the cracks of the granite lines stretching out under the town, burning all the way.  Once it hit the green crystals it erupted into actinic fire, straight up into the sky and brighter than a laser show.  Fireworks, a plasma arc – but in a continuous straight line, up, too high to see the top.

The others fell back, it was too bright to look at.  Duke shielded his own eyes, but she pulled his arm down, and cut it the same as the other.  The cuts didn’t heal, for whatever reason- because she’d made the wound, or because of the crystal.  She leaned into him, her voice directly in his ear.  “You can absorb Troubles, Duke.  Remember what that feels like.  Reach out,” and she put the palms of his hands directly down on the bedrock.  “Bring them to you.”

His hands were numb – but he felt something.  Inside, connected to his heart, to that place where your heart went when it hurt beyond bearing.  And lines connecting him to Haven, to all of the people of Haven.  God, so many Troubles.  This – this was going to hurt.

“Now, Duke, give them to me.”

No, his heart said.  Dana was in her, somewhere, and he still believed that somehow Dana was innocent, that Dana was separate.  He opened his eyes, and saw that she had cut herself, that her blood flowed with his into the earth.  “Crocker –” and that was Dana’s voice, no mistake, “now.”

He did, and the fire turned into a fire hydrant, a hydrant of fire – from him into the stone, all the anger, grief, and pain, healing the cracks and reforging the bedrock into something new, and whole.

 

The face looking back at her was the same as ever, dark brown eyes, black hair.  But somehow it seemed to shift and slide around, like looking through a prism, a cracked prism, where none of the lines met where they should have.  Still the world spun and it was like she could feel it, feel the speed of the world as it turned on its axis, as it flung itself through space.  They were all going to be flung off if she didn’t hang on with all her strength.  Gravity pulled her down, but some equal force was pulling her up, up and away, she was unplugged, untethered to anything solid.  Reality itself was a watercolour in the rain, only the faint outlines left and ready to be painted over.

Reality had no reality in Haven.  Certainly no permanence.

Duke’s face, his sweet sweet face.  He was talking to her, and yelling at Nathan.  That ridiculous mat of hair under his chin, as if it somehow hid how long his jaw stretched.  She brushed his hair out of his eyes.  For pity’s sake, she would make him cut it at some point.  He’d probably never had a mother to nag him about it.  She didn’t like the look there now – he was scared.  Horrified.  She wanted to help him, she always wanted to help him.  She just didn’t know how.

Nathan’s face, so beautiful. Equally terrified – he wasn’t going to be much help either.  Eyes that made her think of flying. Of skies that were warm and cloudless, an ocean of air that promised and teased freedom and joy.  She had wings when he looked at her, and she could fly.  The deep lines around his mouth, once the sign of how easily and often he smiled, now wounded reminders of how little he did.

Were they real?  Did they matter? She so wanted them to matter. Her feelings were considerable, if not considered.  But there was someone else running this show, not her.  She would beg for their happiness if only she knew to whom to address her pleas.  Not for herself. She was gossamer.  A cloud in those blue skies, a faint song from nowhere. But these two men, they loved her, and would be hurt by her loss. She didn’t want that.

She could go now. She could feel it. She could vanish into thin air even though several pairs of hands worked on her body.  Medical hands, pushing and prodding and that miserable machine that squeezed her arm painfully and supposedly measured the strength of her heart and its ability to push her blood around in her arteries and veins. That was not what her heart was for.  Her heart was supposed to be strong enough to take on all of Haven’s troubles, shoulder them and end them. Did that bloody machine measure that? Because she really wanted to know how she was doing.

Two men, and they were going to break her heart.

But they anchored her, equally, backed her up and supported her when she felt the sand melt from beneath her feet, and the wind die from beneath her wings. Two men, and the rest of the world looked as dimly on that as they did on songs that made people insane, or voodoo cursed sketches.  Two men, and only one of her. Because there was only one, there had only ever been one.  Even in decades past she had gone by other names, other memories.  They were all there, here, now too.  But now there was only one of her.

She was going to stay, she discovered.  She hadn’t actively decided, but the forces pulling her away backed off, decided to wait. They could wait. As if they were curious, more than benevolent.  They wanted to see what she would do with her two men.

 

She woke, in a hospital bed, with her two men asleep at her feet.  Asleep in chairs at the foot of her bed, but still.  A tube ran into her arm, dripping saline, and a pump at the other end clicked away regular as a heartbeat.

Why was she still alive?

She wasn’t surprised when Agent Howard walked into her room.  She was a little surprised when the pump seemed to pause, and when neither Duke nor Nathan stirred.  Maybe she shouldn’t have been. 

“Did it work?”  Please, please, please.  She really didn’t want to have to do it all over again.

“Duke Crocker absorbed all the Troubles.  The last one he gave up was his ability to heal, after he healed himself.  After he healed the town.”

“And Nathan?”

“Nathan Wuornos had an ambulance ready and waiting.  Remarkable forethought under that kind of pressure.”

“And me?”

“Yes, what about you?”  He rubbed at his upper lip as if she was still his wayward agent, and he her long-suffering supervisor. They both knew that wasn’t true.  But he had guided her, watched over her, from the beginning.  Not always as a black man, sometimes white, sometimes – especially early on – as an ancient Mi’kmaw shaman.  Only sometimes had she listened to his advice.

“Please, I want to stay.”

“All is forgiven, you know.  You can come home now.”

She would not ask again.  That would be vain, in both senses.  “Haven is my home.  And I think I can still help people there.”  Her eyes strayed involuntarily to the sleeping men at her feet.

“Mmm.  There is that.  There is still a Crocker in Haven.  Maybe we shouldn’t upset him again so soon.”

Was that a yes?  She allowed herself a slow smile.

“Fine.”  He waved a finger at her.  “But only for another sixty… seventy… years.”  He turned to leave.

“Wait,” and she held out a bandaged arm.  “What color are my eyes?”

“Sort of… hazelish.”

Like they had been in the beginning.  Her memories were fading even as she spoke, becoming less something she had lived, more like something she had read about.  Once upon a time.  Or, like a combination of Dana and Audrey together.

He smiled and nodded, as if he could read her thoughts.  “Two guys, one you.  Good luck with that.”

Oh, _fuck_.  So much for the happy ending. 

Howard laughed himself out. The pump started clicking again, and Nathan stirred and woke just as the door clicked closed. "Audrey?"

It would do.

 

 

 


End file.
